“Sundown, Arkansas” by Emma Steinkraus
With First Thursday returning to the Fayetteville square next week, local art gallery Fayetteville Underground is preparing for a guest artist exhibition by Fayetteville native and Washington D.C. painter Emma Steinkraus.
Beginning at 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 4, the gallery will present featured work by Steinkraus, whose most recent series of paintings includes studio self-portraits based on the theme of foraging, as well as plein air landscapes created earlier this summer at the Mount Gretna School of Art. Steinkraus uses fabricated landscapes and interiors pieced together from personal photographs, images found on the internet, and 15th century Netherlandish paintings to create work that explores the closeness and balance between interpersonal and ecological relationships.
From her artist statement:
I create spaces that explore a series of tensions between, for example, the rewards and limitations of domesticity, or the desire for contact with a natural world that I take part in destroying. Most fundamentally, I attempt to diagram the tensions within intimacy to reveal the complex ways a relationship oscillates between closeness and inward loneliness, division and reconciliation.
Expect to find food and drinks at the gallery on Sept. 4, along with live music by singer-songwriter Eli Nichols.
Painting from Going Out by Natalie Brown
Also next month, Fayetteville Underground will host an open portfolio sale on Saturday, Sept. 20 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
In conjunction with her Going Out series, artist Natalie Brown will open her portfolios to the public to raise funds to continue her fine arts education in the Underground’s main gallery. Residents are invited to stop by to purchase one-of-a-kind drawings and paintings at a reasonable price.
Fayetteville Underground, which features monthly art shows with work from artist members and visiting artists, is located at 101 W. Mountain St. on the southwest corner of the Fayetteville downtown square.
