April 9 — May 15, 2021
New Paintings from the Whidbey Series
Robert Jessup
Conduit Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition Robert Jessup: New Paintings from the Whidbey Series.
Robert Jessup’s first Whidbey paintings were hybrids: the color areas in his previous Square series were still quite prominent, the lines like borders set free to randomly writhe and scatter across the surface without much purpose. Wanting to have drawing play a bigger role in his work, Jessup began to explore the interaction of the lines more directly in a series of works on paper done at the end of 2019. Just lines of color. Ideas explored on paper were quickly incorporated into the paintings.
As the series evolved, the lines became wider, slower, more deliberate in their pace. What has become important is the character of the lines, how they respond to each other, speak to each other. They selectively intertwine, or simply touch, or almost touch. Like voices in an opera, singing with and against each other.
Born in Moscow, Idaho and raised in Seattle, Robert Jessup received his BFA from the University of Washington in 1975 and his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1979. His work has been exhibited extensively since 1981 and is in numerous private and public collections including the metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the University of Virginia, the University of Texas, the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Dallas Museum of Art. He is a Professor Emeritus from the University of North Texas where he taught painting in the College of Visual Arts and Design from 1991 to 2018. His work is represented by Conduit Gallery in Dallas, Texas. In 2019, Jessup and his wife, Faith Scott Jessup, moved to Whidbey Island, Washington.