christmas fair 2017 knoxville expo center

Watercolor specialist Richard Clarke often joined Stevens and Sublett on painting sessions in Knoxville and Maine, as did Ewing on occasion. While Sublett shifted effortlessly between gestural landscape abstractions and realist figure paintings, Stevens consistently produced abstract vistas in which land and sea appear by stirred by turbulent natural forces. Walter Stevens and Carl Sublett shared a passion for landscape painting out of doors, whether in local marble quarries or coastal Maine where they summered with their families. However, Birdwell strongly favored Knoxville subjects while Ewing often depicted views of faraway places and exotic subjects encountered on his frequent overseas travels.

Robert Birdwell and Buck Ewing were bonded by their common interest in painting the human figure and city views. Certain members worked closely with one another, while others rarely communicated except on matters related to the group’s exhibitions. The Knoxville 7 remained a loose association whose artists maintained distinctly separate creative paths. This is the most comprehensive presentation of their work to date, and represents an important step the KMA’s mission to preserve and celebrate East Tennessee’s art history. This exhibition calls attention to the important artistic contributions they made collectively and individually. They were influential as artists and teachers, establishing a foothold for avant garde ideas in East Tennessee and elevating the area’s visual arts profile. Sometimes they exhibited as a foursome and later as “The Knoxville 7” with fellow painters Joanna Higgs Ross and Richard Clarke, and sculptor Philip Nichols. Brash and ambitious, they explored the new visual language of Abstract Expressionism and produced what are likely the first abstract art works in East Tennessee. Kermit “Buck” Ewing, who came to Knoxville as the first head of the University of Tennessee art department, recruited a group of progressive artists-initially Carl Sublett, Walter Stevens, and Robert Birdwell-to exhibit together in Knoxville and throughout the Southeast. This exhibition is the first ever devoted to the history and legacy of a group of groundbreaking Knoxville artists who worked and exhibited together from the mid 1950s until 1965.

Christmas fair 2017 knoxville expo center