Road Trip?

I'm so glad May has finally arrived. In just a few days, a show featuring new works from Annie Butrus will open at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Visual Arts Gallery. Peach Tree Trail officially opens Thursday May 7 from 5 to 7 p.m. and runs from May 8 through June 5, 2009.

For Annie, this exhibition is really the culmination of five years of hard work. She has been visiting Alabama farms every season to trace the shadows made by the trees onto specially prepared panels, and she uses a glazing technique that is akin to a contemporary version of a Dutch Old Masters process. Inspiration for her abstract paintings came in part from the 2007 farming year, when a late freeze and an ensuing drought caused a loss of at least 50% of the peach crop.

Gallery visitors will see 28 diptychs installed together as a simulated trail of the Culp Farms peach orchard. (The paintings represent varied farmers' orchards in Chilton County.)

The Visual Arts Gallery is located on the ground floor of the Humanities building, 900 13th Street, South, in Birmingham, Alabama. Admission is free. (205) 934-0815.

Above and below is a peek into the artist's studio. The gallery installation will be quite different, but I thought you would enjoy seeing how Annie has temporarily stacked the works salon-style.

Fall series

Winter, spring, summer

Fall with some winter

In Birmingham Annie is represented by Amanda Schedler Fine Art (205) 591-9093.

UAB is also fortunate to have Professor Heather McPherson. Her area of expertise encompasses portraiture, and she has received accolades for her book, The Modern Portrait in Nineteenth-Century France, as well as her exhibition catalogue, Fin-de-Siëcle Faces: Portraiture in the Age of Proust. McPherson's current project is Art and Celebrity in the Age of Reynolds and Siddons.