Evening Presentation by Whiskeytown's Artist-in-Residence

Date: October 31, 2012
Contact: Jim Milestone, [phone]

On Wednesday November 14, 2012 at 7:00 pm, the Friends of Whiskeytown will host a free presentation by nationally recognized visiting artist Joellyn Duesberry at the Turtle Bay Exploration Park Visitor Center Theater.

Joellyn Duesberry arrived at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in October and is spending a month as the park Artist-in-Residence. Throughout her stay, in the solitude of the fall season at Whiskeytown, Ms. Duesberry has been extremely productive, painting numerous canvases.

Ms. Duesberry will be showing a 30-minute film developed for PBS that describes her life and work. The film will be followed by an open question and answer session and the display of her work inspired by Whiskeytown and her travels throughout Shasta County.

According to John Walsh, Director Emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum, "Joellyn Duesberry is one of the best and most interesting landscape painters in the United States. She has a place in the great lineage of postwar American gestural landscape painters that include Fairfield Portner, Nell Blaine, Jane Freilicher, Wolf Kahn, Allen Gussow and Neil Weliver."

Joellyn Duesberry describes her work as follows: "I am fiercely committed to my materials and to an internalized subject, blissful or terrifying, in deepest emotional memory, which I projected long ago onto the setting where first emotions occurred. I have attempted to re-create these primal motifs in new places. From my first landscape painting I became a part of the landscape, with a good animal understanding of it while within it. No matter the continent or square foot upon which I set an easel, I seek an authentic, direct and high voltage response to the land on canvas."

Joellyn Duesberry has been painting for over 50 years and has work displayed in seven museums throughout the country. She splits her time between Colorado and Millbrook, New York. Ms. Duesberry has painted plein-air around the world and is a veteran of dozens of solo exhibitions at such nationally recognized galleries as James Graham and Sons in New York and Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Whiskeytown National Recreation Area's Artist in Residence Program invites professional artists to spend quality time exploring the natural and cultural landscapes of the park. Artists are selected through jurors representing major art museums of California. Through the assistance of the Friends of Whiskeytown and the National Park Service, the artists usually produce several paintings during their visit to the park and donate one of their works to the park's art collection. We appreciate the generosity of Ms. Duesberry in donating her time and expertise to the park, and of Turtle Bay Exploration Park for hosting this event in heart of the Redding community.

For more information contact Jim Milestone at 530-242-3460.

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