Southside Gallery hosting Ole Miss student art in annual exhibition
OXFORD — Local landscapes painted by Ole Miss students decorate the walls of Oxford’s Southside Gallery today.
Since 2010, Ole Miss art professor Philip Jackson of Pontotoc has been teaching a high-intensity, two-week Plein Air — a French term that means “open air” — painting class during the May intersession.
“The first plein air painters … adopted this approach to painting en plein air for making studies they would later develop into large, more refined paintings in the studio,” Jackson explained via email. “It would take the following generation of impressionist painters to identify these ‘studies’ as finished works of art, proving to serve as the primary way to explore ideas of optics and color and to capture the expression of a fleeting moment.”
The Ole Miss students meet daily, all day, for the duration of the class.
“We lecture and critique each morning and paint on location at a different place each day,” Jackson wrote. “This process is intense — and not for the faint of heart. Students are fully immersed in a subject day after day, which allows for effective retention of information. Also, being in (environments) with shifting weather conditions forces you to look critically and respond swiftly.”
The work on-site gives students stronger observational skills and better senses of color, Jackson said. The students get to learn from active professional artists during the second week of the class.
“This year, we invited back figurative and landscape painter, Brian Rego,” Jackson said. “His work is known and collected internationally.”
As the class comes to a close and the paint is still drying, the students put their work on display in the Southside Gallery.
“If you live in Oxford or have visited during the two weeks after graduation at Ole Miss, you’ve likely seen Philip and his students working at their easels around the Courthouse Square,” a Southside press release reads. “In addition to The Downtown Square, the class makes trips to Rowan Oak, Sardis Lake, Lamar Park, and Greenfield Farms. The exhibition is a painterly tour of Oxford and Lafayette County.”
The exhibit opened today and will remain on display through Saturday, May 25.
Rego’s and Jackson’s work will be on display in the gallery as well, as will that of Jackson’s art department colleague Brooke Alexander.
Writing about what he enjoys about the class, Jackson said that “It feels most like what the original classroom, an atelier, used to be. Professionals and students work (alongside) each other in a combined effort to resolve ideas through the medium of paint.”
