Two oil paintings by Cameron University assistant professor of art Jack Crouch have been selected for inclusion in the seventh annual Center for Contemporary Arts National Juried Competition and Exhibition. This is the third consecutive year that Crouch’s work has been chosen for the prestigious show. His paintings, titled “The Backway” and “Kim Putting Her Hair Up,” will be on display at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene, Texas, through October 28.
“My work is rooted in expressionism and abstraction,” Crouch says. “I love a direct approach to painting. The formalist qualities of color, line, shape and composition drive the paintings. Intense color and free brushwork hold precedence over the subject. I find the possibilities of what oil paint can do as a material to be endless. This love for the material keeps me exploring different styles and motifs including the figure, narrative painting, and the landscape.”
Crouch joined the CU faculty in August 2021 and teaches painting and drawing. Born and raised in rural Illinois to an artist father and preschool teacher mother, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Western Illinois University in 2009. He then earned a Master of Arts degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Bradley University.
His medium of choice is oil painting, and his work ranges from still life paintings to large-scale narrative figure paintings that are influenced by Italian Renaissance artists as well as the New Leipzig School of painters.
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