The Coburn Gallery at Ashland University will host a group exhibition titled “Figura(tive),” which features a selection of paintings curated by the gallery director, Cynthia Petry. The exhibiting artists include Benjy Davies, Beth Nash, Joe Radoccia and Judy Takacs. The exhibition will open with a reception on Thursday, August 30, from 4:30-6:30pm. During the reception, several of the exhibiting artists will be giving a gallery talk at 5pm.The gallery talk and the reception are both free and open to the public.
Benjy Davies teaches Graphic Design and Printmaking at the University of Rio Grande. He received his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University in 1995, and his Master of Fine Arts from Ohio University in 2000. His work includes design, illustration, drawing, painting and printmaking. and has been exhibited in over 200 regional, national and international exhibitions. In 2003, he founded Lucky Man Press, a studio for the creation of original fine art lithography.
Beth Nash is a faculty member at Marietta College where she teaches life drawing, portraiture, water-based painting and illustration. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kent State University and her Master’s in Liberal Learning from Marietta College. Nash has spent 25 years designing airbrush painted and hand dyed fabric and clothing, which she sold in galleries and fine art shows across the United States. She received numerous awards and was featured in the Fiberarts Design Book in 2004 and 2007. She has served as a juror for several national fine craft shows as well. Her current focus within painting is portraiture, both human and animal figures. She currently exhibits paintings in juried exhibitions and art festivals when she's not teaching.
Joseph Radoccia’s paintings have meandered from medium to medium but have always reflected his fascination with forms of intimacy and they continue to do so today with his large portraits on paper. His early artworks have explored themes such as the labyrinth of courtship, the AIDS epidemic, navigating sexual identity, love and fear. Eventually, Radoccia abandoned the narrative to exclusively engage in passive observational painting. He left Brooklyn, traveled several times to Madagascar, and settled in Beacon NY where his practice matured from objects to faces. His current works are over-sized intricate portraits that become faces as maps of experience. Currently, Radoccia has a solo portrait exhibition in Kingston NY: Becoming Elders: Portraits of LGBTQ elders.
Judy Takács is best known for her long-term portrait series, Chicks with Balls: Unsung Female Heroes, she began her art career in 1986 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration and Portrait Painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art. A winner of 10 Best-In-Show Awards in the past seven years, she has curated, juried and exhibited in solo, group and juried shows at museums, art centers and colleges nationally. Judy most recently closed her critically acclaimed two-artist inaugural show, SECRETS, with the late Marilyn Szalay, Cleveland’s iconic figure drawing artist and instructor. Takács’ work is archived with the legendary artists of Cleveland at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve. Takács’ goal as a painter of people is to create a living breathing soul on canvas, who invites viewers to linger, connect and think.
The Figura(tive) painting exhibition will run from August 30 through September 28.
The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 12 noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday and is free and open to the public. For more information about the reception or exhibition, call 419.289.5652 or visit us on Facebook.
