The UMHB College of Visual and Performing Arts and the UMHB Art Department are proud to present the exhibition Below the Painted Surface: Paintings by Susan and David Harmon from February 11 through March 4, 2016 in the Baugh Center for Visual Arts Gallery. The public is invited to an opening reception and gallery talk on Thursday, February 11 at 5:00 P.M.  Both the exhibition and gallery talk are free and open to the public.

The exhibition will feature the recent paintings by this husband and wife duo who share both a vibrant art and teaching career. Both are art educators at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, TX, where David serves as Chairman of the Art Department. Both have shown their art extensively throughout the United States in solo and group exhibitions and have many honors and awards professionally and academically to their credit. Both have earned the Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in Painting. They also have earned the Master of Fine Arts in Painting; David from Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, and Susan from Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia.

One of David’s series is a small format collection of paintings called Omnis where intimate acrylic works with unpredictable forms emerge within continuous patterned brushwork. Of these paintings David said, “My goal is to achieve a harmonious compositional balance of paint passages drawn/brushed into the surface.” Concerning his series Primus David states: “I had previously viewed much world prehistoric cave and exposed rock art at locations including Chauvet, Lascaux, Altamira and Native American images which I had seen and drawn from the American west. These images are quite provocative and mysterious. When I initially viewed humankind’s first marks they seemed raw and random. My further study revealed a world of images rich in content. Some images are clear, yet others are layered in ritualized meaning beyond contemporary understanding.” David’s Primus series is a response to these ancient enigmatic narratives interpreted in contemporary materials.

Susan’s work is inspired by the stories of people whose lives are often fractured, demoralized, or have issues of mental illness. In an artist’s statement she wrote “…  When creating these artworks, although many of them deal with sad, angry and violent themes, often and almost always, there are as many good, safe and quiet themes which counter the bad ones. … My intention in the creation of these art works is to use the universal language of art to increase people’s awareness through the presentation of strong emotive and expressive paintings. Stories inspire me to paint. As I scratch, tear and smear paint with my fingers, I try to be honest in my process for expressing my deepest personal feelings toward these passages.

Baugh Center for the Visual Arts Gallery hours are 9 A.M. to 4 P.M., Monday through Friday. For more information visit http://undergrad.umhb.edu/art/ or contact Hershall Seals at hseals@umhb.edu.