Downtown Raleigh Alliance

Flanders Art Gallery will present six studies from Chris Wilson’s upcoming “100 Scenic Views along the Murphy to Manteo Highway” along with a retrospective of his works. This exhibition will be the first public showing of some of the compositional studies by the post-abstract Southern realist. The exhibit opens with a meet the artist reception on April 20th, 6-8:30pm and will run April20-May 10th.

“100 Scenic Views along the Murphy to Manteo Highway” will be Wilson’s first public exhibition of his studies based on the one hundred large landscape paintings that will create an overall portrait of the State of North Carolina. These paintings will result in a series of exhibitions and a book documenting the works when completed in 2010. The paintings will record the rich variety of the scenic environment in various seasons, times of day or n ight, and types of weather, especially emphasizing dramatic vistas.

Wilson began this project over 2 years ago researching, photographing, and painting compositional studies. He currently has almost 50 works planned. Wilson’s vision is to show all 100 works as a group rather than focusing on selling the individual works as they are produced.

Wilson’s retrospective works come from the regional retrospective exhibition that was held in Wilson, Rocky Mount, and Tarboro in 2003 and traveled in part to the Burroughs-Chapin Museum in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and the Albany Georgia Museum of Art in Albany, Georgia, in 2004.