Visual Arts Center exhibit features works by family of artists

The exhibition “Generations: Influences of the Pennsylvania Academy” will open at Tidewater Community College’s Visual Arts Center on Jan. 20.

The opening reception will be Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. An informal gallery talk will precede the opening at 6:30 p.m.

Events are free and open to the public. The exhibition continues through March 7.

“Generations: Influences of the Pennsylvania Academy” features paintings, drawings, prints and mixed media works by four members of the Muldowney family, all of whom are graduates of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). The exhibition illustrates the range of creative undertakings that can arise from a shared point of origin and training.

Philadelphia native and family patriarch Charles Muldowney is a representational painter who has an interest in spiritual narrative. The most traditional of the four artists comprising the exhibition, the PAFA instructor explores topics that include religion, landscape and portraiture while communicating the divine through a language without words.

TCC Professor Ryan Muldowney is a multidisciplinary artist and Visual Arts Center faculty member whose works differ in scale, subject, media and influences. He sees his studio practice as a philosophical and evolutionary journey toward mastery and is rooted in experimentation and discovery.

A member of the studio arts faculty at Chowan University, Jacob Muldowney of Murfreesboro, NC, is intrigued by symbols and spaces. Through the creation of mixed media paintings, he examines subjects that suggest a point of access as well as a barrier. He represents the space between spaces as a metaphor for the human perceptual experience.

An arts educator at Brigham Young University–Idaho and the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho, Shushana Muldowney Rucker searches for objects that represent the passage of time. Her oil paintings of worn buildings and bridges, overpasses and rail yards, depict ruins of the past. For her, the deterioration of these structures is a reminder of the natural consequence of time.

For information, call Shelley Brooks at 757-822-1878.