Muldowney Family to Exhibit Artwork at TCC’s Visual Arts Center

“Generations: Influences of the Pennsylvania Academy” features paintings, drawings, prints, and mixed media works by four members of the Muldowney family who are all graduates of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The exhibition illustrates the range of creative undertakings that can arise from a shared point of origin and training.

Philadelphia native and family patriarch, Charles Muldowney is a representational painter who has an interest in spiritual narrative. The most traditional of the four artists comprising the exhibition, the PAFA instructor explores topics that include religion, landscape, and portraiture while communicating the divine through a language without words.

Portsmouth’s Ryan Muldowney is a multidisciplinary artist and Visual Arts Center faculty member whose works differ in scale, subject, media, and influences. Ryan sees his studio practice as a philosophical and evolutionary journey towards mastery and is rooted in experimentation and discovery.

A member of the studio arts faculty at Chowan University, Jacob Muldowney of Murfreesboro, NC, is intrigued by symbols and spaces. Through the creation of mixed media paintings, Jacob examines subjects that suggest a point of access as well as a barrier. He represents the space between spaces as a metaphor for the human perceptual experience.

An arts educator at Brigham Young University–Idaho and the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho, Shushana Muldowney Rucker of Iona, ID searches for objects that represent the passage of time. Through her oil paintings, worn buildings and bridges, overpasses and rail yards, are depicted as ruins of the past. For her, the deterioration of these structures is a reminder of the natural consequence of time.

Free and open to the public daily 9 am – 8 pm. through March 7th.

Visual Arts Center
340 High Street
Portsmouth, VA 23704
757-822-1878.

Blog Author: Shelley Brooks
Coordinator, VAC Exhibitions & Events
Curator, TCC Permanent Collections
Visual Arts Center