Artist Brian Bishop will lecture about his paintings and drawings and at 5 p.m. Thursday, April 17, in Room 223 of the Fine and Performing Arts Center on the campus of Western Carolina University. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Bishop’s work, in scales small to large, explores margins and overlooked moments, and stylistically is informed by portraiture, snapshot photography and the contemporary cultural phenomenon of constant surveillance. “Through this work I mine the landscape of the common, the mundane, the banal, and the fragmented as they are presented in the context of notation, documentation and memory,” Bishop said. His media include encaustic (hot wax) painting, watercolors and charcoal. An example of his encaustic work, "Untitled (Routine)" (8.5 x 8.5 inches, 2007), is shown above right.

Bishop attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, earned his bachelor’s degree in fine art from the Memphis College of Art and earned his master’s degree in fine art from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. He has taught at the University of Alabama since 2002.

Bishop’s solo exhibitions include the Cheekwood in Nashville, Tenn.; the University of Delaware; Arkansas State University; Artspace in Raleigh; Georgetown University; and Youngblood Gallery in Atlanta. Group exhibitions include the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Fla.

Bishop’s visit is part of the School of Art and Design’s Artist-in-Residence Program, funded by the Provost’s Office. For more information, contact Kelly Popoff, adjunct instructor of art, at (828) 508-1479 or kpopoff@wcu.edu.

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Last modified: Wednesday, March 26, 2008