The GumTree Museum is exhibiting seven new artists. SEVEN SURROUNDING SENSIBILITIES is the title of this show and it runs now until the end of July. There will be an opening reception for the artists July 20 from 5-7 p.m. and the public is invited to attend. The title of the show alludes to from where these seven artists originate and their view of our world. Represented are Itawamba County with painters John Underwood and James Price; Lee County with the mixed media of Evan Walker and Beth LaValley; Union County with painters Glenn Payne and Becky Payne and finally the paintings of Jeffery Allen from Lafayette County. This show was organized to give voice to a few young artists who too often are crowded out by their elders. What this exhibition demonstrates is that there are certain traditions that are not lost on the young especially in rural Mississippi. There is nothing here outrageously out of place or intellectually high handed. This work though different is conservative.

These artists are young and as young artists they view the world within the cultural context of all things new. Their reach extends only as far as their young lives and that is what makes this work appear fresh and different. As they seek out a vocabulary they draw a little from an intellectualized history but more from within our present sphere of culture. View Beth LaValley’s work. She is a trained biologist and she characterizes living organisms by making plush toy caricatured creatures. But her “critters” are not observations made from the natural world. Instead LaValley references the biology of creatures that populate the television of any child’s Saturday morning. Her works are all original but appear as familiar as any Disney or Pokemon character. With the nostalgia of vintage materials under a sewing machine she creates them with the same deft ability a talented cartoonist would apply on paper. Strung together into a crazy quilt configuration these “critters” read like some sideshow menagerie of embarrassing relatives. Another interesting take on nostalgia verses present technology is Evan Walker’s work “REDUCE RECYCLE RADIO”. A common radio from the sixties, something any kid growing up today with an I Pod might be oddly curious about, sits on a pedestal like an icon from your grandmothers house. Its tube guts have been removed and are on display above it. Like some ancient Dada relic from the past it defiantly announces itself to the puzzled onlooker. It emanates from its plastic box corpse, a ghost like voice, changing each time it declares its own existence. I am not art I am a Radio. But like art it cannot escape its pedestal.

Within the realm of traditional mediums we see the painters John Underwood, Jason Payne, Becky Payne, James Price and Jeffery Allen. Each handles the media in his or her own way and most could be said to be traditional in their treatment of paint on canvas. Looking at John Underwood’s oil on canvas “MEMPHIS ROOFTOPS’ one can see his love for texture. Each brush stroke is meticulously applied creating an array of miniature patterns across the canvas distinguishing tree bark from shingles, shingles from clouds, and clouds from cold metal ventilators. Cold blue grays overlay warmer complements of orange and brown hinting that winter is about to turn to spring. Evidenced again as a lone green leaf breaks from the trunk of a barren tree. Underwood’s work may appear to be the most traditional in the group perhaps because he is a restorer of paintings by the early masters. Yet when you see his odd use of views and the precarious juxtaposition of objects you get a sense that these images are all but traditional. His paintings allow us to contemplate an existence beyond an ordinary arrangement of life.

Throughout all of Glenn Payne’s work his entire palette appears to be made from shades of the paint Paynes Grey, an ironic pun perhaps? Beyond that what the viewer is immediately struck by is his use of light. His dramatic illumination of cinematic noir subjects appears to be informed by 17th century Baroque paintings. One in particular “THE NIGHT WAS COLD AND PIERCING LIKE HIS GAZE.” looks as if the Baroque painter Caravaggio’s work ENTOMBMENT has been transformed into a 1950’s cinema noir scene. Caravaggio’s painting is obviously a religious subject about the entombment of Christ. On the surface Payne’s work all appears to be drawn from the subject of old gangster movies but underneath that, many seem to be contemporary analogies to these traditional Christian subjects. “THEY WERE GONNA GET WHAT THEY CAME FOR” by Payne is not unlike the subject St. Anthony tormented by Demons. The central figure and protagonist of Payne’s painting is surrounded by his tormentors tugging at his glowing white shirt. His face registers no emotion only detachment from the violence thrust upon him. Very much like the traditional portrayal of St. Anthony who is surrounded and tortured by demons yet appears oblivious to it all. Is Payne telling us through another pun that his paintings with their dramatic use of illumination are in fact religious illuminations?

Becky Payne who combines the more recent practice of allowing paint to manifest itself onto the canvas as a liquid and the more traditional attempt to organize it with the brush, has created images that deny both approaches their due place in art history. By co-opting a process of poured paint advanced by such artists as Lynda Benglis whose works proclaim the feminist ideal, Becky Payne instead emphasizes an idea held by many that it is only a craft of flowing paint into marbleized patterns. To underscore even further the decorative nature of this paint treatment she uses the effect over the traditional format of a stretched canvas. And to further deconstruct this dichotomy she imposes the feminine imagery of the flower, borrowed from the likes of Georgia O’Keeffe, over the amorphous pattern. Two women held up as feminist icons are brought together in these paintings by a woman and canceled out. Rather than making some grand proclamation these paintings demure toward a more traditional view of the feminine, wherein lie the mysteries of woman. Rather than shout these paintings whisper the sublime as a secret to be kept lest it loses its power.

James Price views the landscape with the disgruntled attitude of a commissioned painter whose client of poor taste cannot be pleased. Perhaps with the most tongue and cheek cynicism of the group Price announces his intent by labeling his paintings “Designer Landscapes”. His vivid and masterful color combinations and use of paint belie the simplicity of these striking landscapes. He reduces all subtly from the land into bold graphics. For Price the landscape is no longer the metaphorical poem of mans life but a loud slogan shouted with designer colors all to match some hideous couch. The beauty of light and color comes through as in Price’s “DEPARTURE / ARRIVAL”. You can see his love for the land but for him it appears unobtainable. He shows it to us through the distance of memory with the details shot out leaving only a bold graphic of light and color. Price’s landscapes are like the dream of owning land, perhaps something as romantic as a vineyard but only coming as close as the graphic of a wine bottle’s label.

Jeffery Allen is perhaps an unconscious decision to create an identity far from his father’s painterly figurative work (Jere Allen), he has chosen the landscape for his sustenance. Yet in this grouping of works only one such land inspired piece survives, STAGE I. In his earlier works the landscape is clearly present as subject but in “STAGE I” we see Allen contemplate only selected aspects from the land. The rows of organized agriculture are still clearly present in this painting. But this time Allen becomes enamored by the use of brushed on line and color. The painting diffuses its subject into overlapping patterns of line, color and texture. Perhaps a breakthrough for Allen, he sees his chance to let go of the land entirely. Evolving in this direction his most recent works are studies of layer upon layer of line and color. His brush work appears limited to one or two brushes. In his most successful pieces he eliminates the idea of movement across the picture plane as in IMPACT 2 and IMPACT 3. The layering creates an atmospheric density, in the first one of light and in the second of darkness. His studies and observations of the land reverberate through the surface’s organization and the compact color schemes of these two works. Are these works a transition for Allen and if they are it will be interesting to see where they will lead him.

These young artists show us at first glance what appear to be traditional views from a world of art but in reality they are a new Post Modern sensibility to our cultural surroundings. Even though these artists are not shouting about political or economic policies or even ecological disasters these works do have a civilized concern for humanity. Few if any of these works are self involved or indulgent. There are no cold methodic modernists. There are no isolated regionalists here. There is no one stuck in tradition. That said these young seven have taken tradition and turned it around. The landscape is now a commentary on materialism; the love affair with objects as art that do not want be art; non-representation as representation; movies iconographed into religious illuminations. All are double edged swords. They say “Turn about is fair play” and its true here. Only this is more than just an intellectual turn for this group. These are honest sensibilities coming from people who live, work and play in the rural countryside.