|
Since 1996, Robert Jessup has been as associate professor for the school of Visual Arts at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. He received a Faculty Research Grant from the University of North Texas in 1998 and was granted an Artist in Residence at Roswell Museum and Art Center in Roswell, New Mexico in 1981. Jessup’s most recent solo exhibition was "Painting 1998-2000" at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont, Texas in 2001. He has had solo exhibitions at the University of San Antonio in San Antonio, Texas; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia; the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, Rhode Island; and the Seigal Contemporary Art in New York, New York. His work can be found in public collections: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; The New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; and The South Texas Institute for the Arts, Corpus Christi, TX. He has work in a number of corporate collections: Duke Energy, Houston, TX; Chemical Bank, New York, NY; Pacific Bell, San Francisco, CA; United Bank of Denver, Denver, CO; AT&T, Chicago, IL; and the Coca-Cola, Atlanta, GA.
In Robert Jessup new series he continues to use humor, imaginative characters, everyday objects, and historical influences which create whimsical and playful narratives on canvas. The former art critic for the Christian Science Monitor, Theodore F. Wolff writes "Three things immediately stamp Robert Jessup’s paintings as unique: Their dramatic, uncompromising three- dimensionality, masterful, manipulation of pictorial space, and thick, sumptuously painted surfaces.
But that’s only half the story. Less unusual perhaps, but no less important, is his obvious delight in pure, unadulterated color, his thoughtful utilization of enigma and allegory, and his inclusion of small animals, toys and puppets as important actors in his grandly conceived, decidedly theatrical compositions.
 |
|
For Jessup, the painted word is undeniably a stage, with every element in it – no matter how small and seemingly unimportant-irrevocably assigned its precisely designated place for maximum formal and thematic effect.
Take the matter of his color. What at first glance to be pointillist approach, proves to be only partially so. The typical pointillist dot-like method of paint application if there, true enough, but that movement’s systematic break-up of color- which Jessup takes full advantage of when it suits his purpose- is otherwise ignored whenever he sees a more efficient way of getting the results he desires.
In this, as in every other aspect of his art, Jessup follows his own inner voice. On the one hand, he wants total freedom of expression, on the other, he is fully aware of the benefits of strict formal discipline. Like all good artists, he is not afraid of the past and draws freely and imaginatively from a wide range of historical sources, both formal and thematic, before, bringing such references and everything else together in a seamless and original manner.
Jessup’s paintings are intelligently conceived and executed. They not only challenge the imagination, they demand respect. Many are also mysterious, offering almost as many strange, inexplicable goings-on as occur in the paintings of Bosch and Bruegel. Among them are a monkey with a tiny pink hat embracing a large fish; a man and a woman holding a huge pie into which a human body has been baked; various objects including toy houses and fruit hanging suspended in air; and any number of bizarre puppet and robot like figures that can be seen a either threatening or amusing, depending on one’s inclinations."
|
|
 Interactive Exhibition
|
