Fayetteville artist featured at OkEq in December
Well-known Fayetteville artist Dr. Adrian Sturdevant is the featured artist in the Oklahomans for Equality First Thursday opening reception and month-long exhibition in December. Dr. Sturdevant began painting six years ago and although he is mostly self-taught, his art has developed and flourished through mentoring by several established studio artists. His work is primarily oil on canvas and board; he has exhibited his paintings in solo and group exhibitions throughout the region.
Sturdevant’s inspiration for the content in his paintings finds its seed in the early photographs of classic Southern Americana that he has gleaned from the Library of Congress. These photographs (all in black and white) inspired an initial curiosity about a complex era in the rural South.
That admiration for simplicity in life has since segued – his works invoke a myriad of gender, racial, social, economic and cultural vulnerability and tension. This artist explores those tensions in his paintings through the high saturation use of color. He simplifies content and alters the composition, to reinforce that narrative and the ethereal tension, racial and otherwise, endemic in American history.
The show begins with the First Thursday reception on December 1 from 6 - 9 p.m. at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center, 621 E. 4th Street in downtown Tulsa. There will be a door prize drawn of the artist’s work. The show continues throughout the month.
Oklahomans for Equality (OkEq) seeks equal rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) individuals and families through advocacy, education, programs, alliances, and the operation of the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center. www.okeq.org
Copyright 2016 The Gayly – November 28, 2016 @ 4:40 p.m.