![]() ![]() The Butler is pleased and honored to present Speck’s work alongside John’s at this special time in the Butler’s history. ![]() Speck Mellencamp understands those formal fealties which Cézanne worked toward all his life. Speck’s colors, muted but beautiful, add richness to his work, with impressionistic-like highlights contributing much to the overall effectiveness of the paintings. Everything he released was at or near the top of the charts and his music was on the radio about as much as Kenny Chesney or Taylor Swift is today. In the early and mid-1980s, everything John Mellencamp touched turned to gold. One is easily reminded of the strongly contrasting light and dark of Caravaggio’s religious themes and how they are magnified by figures emerging from the darkness which envelops them. Former Band Member Spotlight: Crystal Taliefero-Pratt. The black serves to accentuate all that grows from it–figures, clothing, and other elements that fill the rectangle. The grouping of figures appears to step out of the darkness, a chiaroscuro effect that is at once heavily dramatic and sculptural. Louis Zona say “Speck Mellencamp’s paintings pay tribute to the intensity of German Expressionist figurative works. In 2019 Speck exhibited his paintings at the Southern Indiana Center for the Arts along with John and his grandmother Marilyn. He and his dad have collaborated on a few paintings. He is now the executive director of the Southern Indiana Center for the Arts. Speck also worked at the Butler several years ago. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design and studied in Greece. As a young boy, he watched his father painting and was inspired. His is not a work that dabbles along the edges it is every bit as strong-willed as the best of the American expressionists no matter the period with which we might make a comparison.” Free in spirit, his work punches out at us. It is in the work specifically of the Neo-Expressionists that we find a parallel to the offerings of Mellencamp. He is part of a continuum born in the studio of the Ashcan School, winding its way through the action paintings of the New York School and ultimately to the adventurous canvases of the Neo-Expressionists. The art of John Mellencamp stretches the American brand of expressionism. Zona says, “what is clear about the art of John Mellencamp is that his works extends the rich tradition of American expressionistic art that harks back to the painterly canvases of Robert Henri (1865-1929) and the so-called early Modernists that flourished in the early part of the twentieth century. Singer-songwriter and accomplished visual artist John Mellencamp (who’s artwork Monstrosity is part of the Butler’s permanent collection on view in the Brown/Dennison Gallery) along with his son Speck have created a fascinating, two-person exhibition which celebrates figurative expressionism at a very high level.Įxecutive Director, Louis A. BLOODLINE: The Art of John Mellencamp & Speck Mellencamp on view in the Beecher Center’s Flad B Gallery This unique exhibition consists of nineteen paintings-10 by John Mellencamp and 9 by his son, Speck Mellencamp.
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