“Bring it on, After Goya,” a painting by Cameron University assistant professor of art Jack Crouch, has been selected for inclusion in the Hilliard Gallery’s Contemporary Social Realism exhibition. Crouch’s oil painting is one of 21 pieces selected for the national juried exhibit, which will be on display at the Kansas City, Mo., gallery through October 26.
“Bring it on, after Goya” is part of Crouch’s “Remodeling the Masters” series. The oil on linen painting is Crouch’s re-interpretation of Goya’s “The Third of May, 1808 in Madrid,” which has been acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era. Crouch is not the first artist to have found inspiration in the piece. Édouard Manet created a series of five paintings based on the work, which also influenced Picasso’s “Massacre in Korea” and “Guernica.”
Crouch joined the faculty at Cameron 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.
As a young adult, Crouch struggled with addiction. He uses painting and drawing to express the feelings he experienced as a recovering addict, longing for the simplicity of childhood, something no longer attainable to an individual who has experienced the world as he has. His approach to visually articulating his experiences varies from still life paintings where objects are lonely without the indication of human interaction, to large-scale narrative paintings.
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PR#22-116
