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Exhibition By Peter Russom Opens Nov. 18

PLATTSBURGH, NY __The exhibition, "Modern Translation," surveys the past 15 years of the art of Peter Russom, associate professor and chair of the Art Department at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh. Russom will open the exhibition with a lecture on Saturday, Nov. 18, at 3 p.m. in the Burke Gallery, Myers Fine Arts Building. An opening reception will follow. The lecture and reception are free and open to the public.

Russom has been teaching, drawing and painting at SUNY Plattsburgh since 1994. The exhibit, which will be on display until Jan. 28, 2007, is a collection of his paintings, drawings and watercolors. Last year, Russom and his family traveled to Italy and more than 30 works were created from his research during the trip. These works join a select group of earlier pieces to complete the exhibit.

Italy proved to be a dynamic and challenging environment for Russom to create. 

"The elegance and power of Italy energized my responses to the palette," said Russom. "I see the paintings produced from the sabbatical as related, but distinct from my previous work in which the industrial landscape was the primary catalyst." 

Focusing on the architecture in Assisi, Perugia and Rome, the paintings respond to the unique light and color specific to these regions.  His new drawings and watercolors engage the powerful scale and rhythm of sites like the Colosseum and the landscape of Umbria.  Russom views this exhibition as being both an opportunity to display the developments in the art he has created as well as an educational tool for the students at the College.
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Speaking of Russom's art, Edward Brohel, director of the Plattsburgh State Art Museum, said,  "Looking at the sabbatical works in this exhibition, one is tempted to say that Peter Russom has fallen in love.  The work and industrial ethic so evident in his earlier art is being replaced or at least modified by beauty and the pleasures of life - color, surface, texture - real and implied - which glow from each canvass."

Architecture is a central theme in Russom's art, carrying its own aesthetic while acting as a vehicle for social and psychological comment and explorations.  The emphatic and authoritarian statements of earlier studies are modified into a romantic mood of historic annotations.  The exhibition is an experience of emphasis.  All of the interests of the artist are present in each work - conceptually and physically; the formula in each being recalibrated to examine reality and the artist's focus.

Russom received his Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  His works have been exhibited in Vermont, Canada, Washington, D.C. and throughout the United States. 

The Plattsburgh State Art Museum galleries are open seven days a week from 12 noon to 4 p.m. except legal holidays and Dec. 24 through Jan. 1. For more information, call 518-564-2474 or visit the Web site at http://clubs.plattsburgh.edu/museum
 
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