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The Elemental South: Visions of the Southern Landscape

TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, South Carolina
December 4, 2014 – February 26, 2015

Having spent most of her life on her family’s farm in rural Georgia, the prominent Southern author Flannery O’Connor believed that “the things we see, hear, smell, and touch affect us long before we believe anything at all, and the South impresses its image on us from the moment we are able to distinguish one sound from another.” Curated by Wofford College intern Mills Brown and featuring paintings by Rockwell Kent, Robert Gwathmey, Elliott Daingerfield, and Gladys Nelson Smith, this exhibition focuses on the innate but highly complex connection between humans and the land on which they live, and specifically addresses the various ways that artists working in the American South relate to their native or adopted landscape. This relationship cannot be reduced to a single definition, but rather encompasses a wide range of emotions and perspectives that artists have conveyed through their portrayal of human presence in the landscape.