|  Randall Exon, White Barn (1990), 19.5 x 24 inches, oil on board, private collection |
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January 11-April 27, 2003
Fred Beans Gallery
Acclaimed Philadelphia-area painter Randall Exon was the subject of a special
solo exhibition at the James A. Michener Art Museum. Randall Exon:
A Quiet Light featured more than 35 works by the painter, whose
landscapes, interiors, and still lifes have been described as "moody",
"passionate" and "evocative."
The exhibition was sponsored by Dr. Joseph A. Murphy and Dr. Martha J. Murphy
and Rathdán Design Company, and ran through April 27, 2003. It was part
of an ongoing series that highlighted contemporary masters of landscape painting
from the Philadelphia region.
In his paintings, which have centered on the landscape and the figure in
landscape, Exon explores the ways in which memory and imagination inform us
about the land. "My desire to make paintings has always come from my
intense fascination with the land and the evocative effects of light," he
says. His "realism" tends toward evocation, rather than accuracy, as its
primary goal.
Many of Exon's paintings are fictions made up entirely from personal
experience and memory, a combination of past and present impressions. He is
interested in creating the kind of scene that, as he says, "doesn't really
exist outside my painting."

Randall Exon, Hot and Cold (2000), 48 x 68 inches
(diptych), oil on linen, private collection
Born in South Dakota and raised in Kansas and Oregon, Exon received his
Bachelor of Fine Arts from Washburn University in 1978 and later attended
the University of Iowa, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree in
1982. He currently serves as Professor of Studio Art at Swarthmore College,
where he has taught for sixteen years.
In 1997 Exon was awarded a fellowship to the Ballinglen Foundation in
Ballycastle, Co. Mayo, Ireland. He spent the fall semester of 1997 painting
along the northwest coast of Mayo, and many of the hauntingly beautiful
scenes Exon captured there are highlighted in A Quiet Light.
Exon has had one-person and group exhibitions throughout the United States
and in the United Kingdom. He has been affiliated with the More Gallery in
Philadelphia since 1984.
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