Recent Acquisition: After the Rain (Methane)

The Museum has acquired After the Rain (Methane) by Jacqueline Bishop who was recently featured in the Museum’s Natural Wonders: The Art of Jacqueline Bishop and Douglas Bourgeois exhibition in the spring of this year. The addition of Bishop’s work to the Museum’s collection is significant—enhancing the representation of contemporary art and women artists in our collection.

A well respected southern painter and printmaker, Bishop’s art is rooted in landscape painting as she considers the delicate balance between the beauty of the natural world, and humankind’s increasingly destructive impact on it. She weaves together layers of paint and imagery that reflect her concern for biodiversity and the extinction of fragile species that were once a vibrant part of our world, and specifically her native Gulf Coast.

After the Rain (Methane), on view now in Durr Fillauer Gallery, is typical of Bishop’s work in its rich combination of symbols—the ancient, gnarled trees, the masses of red roses, the finches that take refuge there, and the wave-like forms of water that increasingly are encroaching on the Gulf coast landscape. The brilliant colors reflect the majesty of a sunset, but also the chemical residues in the atmosphere that produce those sunsets. Her emaciated animals allude to the impact of our industrialized society on the ecosystem and suggest the consequences for mankind’s future.