Ruffin Gallery Exhibition - A Continuous Storyline: Four Decades of UVA Painting

Ruffin Gallery at the University of Virginia is pleased to announce A Continuous Storyline: Four Decades of UVA Painters, curated by Professor of Art Megan Marlatt and featuring the work of eight of Marlatt's former UVA students from across a thirty-five year career at UVA.

"I've always thought my students were teaching me more than I was teaching them. I call them "my students," but they never really belonged to me. They had wills of their own that decided whether they wanted to learn or not. They had their own ambitions, fears, failures, and triumphs that would lead them to choose whatever path they decided to tread, as I had mine. We'd all stumble around in the studio classroom, trying to realize our creative lives. I had to learn from them as much as teach them.

I call this exhibition of my former students A Continuous Storyline, because each year would bring more students. The lessons would start again until thirty-six years had piled up behind nearly eighteen hundred students. 'I don't remember saying that,' I'd say to myself when a former student told me they remembered a lesson. I also had my own ambitions and fears as their teacher. I remember my failure at realizing I couldn't teach some of my students any longer, they had developed beyond what I had to give. I remember my triumphs as these same students embraced the creative life we all mutually strove for, becoming my peers.

A Continuous Storyline: Four Decades of UVA Painters is an exhibition of eight of these former students, from four decades of my teaching at the University of Virginia. Each artist's work tells their own story, from Gina Beaver's thick lips that endeavor to speak in paint to David Askew's fantastic exploration of identity, beauty, and racial ambiguity. John Arnold's paintings tell the story of a landscape encrusted in the salt disaster of his small hometown of Saltville, while Maggie King Johns' sculpted works carve out the body of a young woman's identity growing up in a Southern Christian home. Tales whispering from the past in a place far away, Phượng Duyên Hải Nguyễn struggles to recount her memories of Vietnam while Tori Cherry tries to capture the present, simple moments in her day-to-day life. Jackson Casady's paintings retell the tales of an upbringing in Hollywood, while Matt Kleberg's pictures of architectural alcoves beckon us to climb on his stage and orate.

As they develop their own personal narratives, these artists will in turn make their impact on younger artists, either through direct teaching or simply by example. Their stories of reaffirming a creative life will continue.

-Megan Marlatt, Professor of Art at the University of Virginia

EXHIBITING ARTISTS: John Arnold ('98), David Askew ('21), Gina Beavers ('96), Jackson Casady ('17), Tori Cherry ('20), Maggie King Johns ('14), Matt Kleberg ('08), Phượng Duyên Hải Nguyễn ('15)

This exhibition was made possible with the support of the University of Virginia's Department of Art and the UVA Vice Provost for the Arts.