PAST SHOWS

Elder Gallery
presents

Southern Contemporary
New Works by Claire Miller Hopkins & Jill Jones

Claire Miller Hopkins and Jill Jones, both from South Carolina, will be featured artists at Elder Gallery’s August exhibition. This is the first major exhibition in North Carolina for both artists whose work has become widely collected across the Southeast.

Elder Gallery’s exhibition, entitled Southern Contemporary, will feature southern landscapes by both artists as well as still life paintings and figures by Hopkins.

Hopkins holds the distinction of Master Pastelist with The Pastel Society of America, Signature Member of The Knickerbocker Artists USA, Member-in Excellence with The Southeastern Pastel Society, Distinguished Pastelist with The Pastel Society of the West Coast and Member-in-Excellence with The South Carolina Watercolor Society. Her work has been featured in numerous national art magazines and art instructional books. She is a renowned figurative painter whose work is included in many private, public and corporate collections.

The southern landscape has become a significant subject in Hopkins’ most recent work. Her use of subtle color captures the contemplative mood of the long summer days in her native South Carolina. In addition to landscapes, Hopkins has created a number of her signature still life paintings on a large scale.

Jones, a former journalist, has been painting professionally for over ten years. She has been included in numerous juried competitions where she was awarded “Best in Show” awards along with several merit prizes for her paintings.

Referring to her work Jones says “To me, all landscapes are self portraits. Trees serve as surrogates for the human form. Skies reflect mood. Even the lay of the land, whether rolling and expansive or flat and confined, represents less the world around me than a world within.”

Jones’ first series, Leaving Taos, was the point in her career in which she recognized the close relationship between the earth’s landscape and the human figure. “I was startled by the figurative quality of the Southwestern juniper bushes, and even more so by the realization that my arrangement of them was both intentional and personally significant. I came to see the work as studies in relationship: what it means to be part of a group; what it means to stand alone; how each of us fits into our individual “landscapes.”

In her current body of work the symbolism remains the same although the inspiration is her native South Carolina.

Southern Contemporary will be on exhibit through August 31, 2006.