Recognized as one of the Visionary Imagists of the contemporary American South, Jacqueline Bishop is known for paintings, drawings and installations exploring the psychological connections between humans and non-humans. Informed by the history of landscape painting and her travels in South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia, Bishop’s work addresses the politics of landscape and the realities of migration and extinction, imbuing the genre with a keen sense of intimacy, agency, and metaphor.

Above the Fruited Plain

“Above the Fruited Plain” refers to the poem written by Professor Katharine Lee Bates in 1893 after traveling through the Midwest from Massachusetts to teach in Colorado. Her metaphorical words ended up as a national song that celebrates the beauty of landscape titled America the Beautiful. This exhibition presents the psychological connection we have to a threatened natural world. Scientists did not record climate change until the late 19th century which could mean that the act of landscape destruction might only be recorded in Art History. I explore the long tradition of landscape painting and the social/political issues behind nature itself. My work omits the human figure but explores animal knowledge. These “world landscapes” are metaphors for the link between human and nonhumans. Included in this exhibition are numerous prints on paper published by Zanatta Editions, Kansas City, KS. The vintage cotton dress series symbolizes the years of forced labor of cotton from the land. The large scale paintings have a dominant palette of alizarin crimson, a pigment that was used by the Egyptians for textiles and murals dating back to 3000 BC. Alizarin crimson symbolizes the methane in our environment resulting in chemical-filled sunsets, the color of roses, blood, and algae in the Gulf of Mexico.

-Jacqueline Bishop