Randall Exon, White Barn (1990), 19.5 x 24 inches, oil on board, private collection

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."

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.