Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature opens at The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina today.
The exhibition reveals McEwen’s lifelong enquiry into light and color through his remarkable paintings of plants. Bringing a modern sensibility to botanical art, McEwen developed a distinctive style, painting on vellum and using large empty backgrounds on which his plant portraits seem to float. Without shadows and executed in exact, minutely accurate detail, he recorded the imperfect and the unique, as well as the flawless. McEwen’s work, shown in this exhibition alongside the works of master botanical artists from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, “has had a lasting impact on the botanical art world, where he is recognized as one of the standard-bearers of today’s renaissance in botanical painting.”
Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature is presented by the Gibbes Museum of Art in association with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London) and Oak Spring Garden Foundation (Virginia); tour management by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA. Generous support for the presentation at the Gibbes is provided by lead sponsors Cindy and Ben Lenhardt.
The exhibition continues until 28 April 2024. For more information, please visit Gibbes Museum.
After this it will tour to other museum venues across the US including:
Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Boston, Maine, 19 September – 15 December 2024
Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, 1 Febuary – 25 March 2025
The Driehaus Museum, Chicago, Illinois, 17 May – 17 August 2025
Offer Waterman represents the Estate of Rory McEwen. Please contact the gallery for any enquiries relating to the acquisition or sale of works by the artist: Email the gallery
