ELLISVILLE – Jones College’s Art Department will be displaying the baseball themed oil paintings of Nathan Mullins in the Eula Bass Lewis Art Gallery until March 27. The show, “Play Ball” features images of Baseball’s superstars and interesting memories from Mullins youth, including images from Baseball Cards to live action images he remembers watching on TV. Additionally, Mullins, who is also a painting instructor at the University of Southern Mississippi, will be giving an “Art Talk” in the gallery on Tuesday, March 25, at 1:30 p.m.
“These paintings feature baseball players, legends of their respective times – largely the 80s and 90s, though at least one is from an earlier period. These are players my brother used to tell me about as we looked together at our baseball card collections when we were younger,” explained Mullins.
Some of the compositions were inspired when Mullins began scanning through highlight reels of the baseball players.
He said, “Fuzzy broadcast images are pulled from these reels and either left alone as found compositions or manipulated to greater or lesser extents before the painting is made as an observational response.”
All of the paintings in the exhibit at Jones College were first made as small oil on panel paintings featuring some of baseball’s stars like Bo Jackson, John Smoltz, Willie Mays and Cal Ripken, Jr. His larger scale paintings were made as observational responses to images of these initial smaller paintings.
Mullins further shared, “The iterative nature of this process lends itself to further abstraction with each additional step away from the initial broadcast image. As a painter, my interest lies in the color and light contrast opportunities presented by the team uniforms along with the iconographic nature of the broadcast image – an image that isolates the figure despite the fact that baseball is a team sport.”
Mullins’ exhibit will be on display in the Eula Bass Lewis Art Gallery until March 27. For more information about upcoming JC art shows or to arrange a visit to the gallery call 601-477-8401. The Eula Bass Lewis Art Gallery is open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m., and by appointment only on Fridays. The gallery is closed during the holidays. To learn more about the Jones College Art Department, https://www.jcjc.edu/programs/finearts/ or the JC Art Department’s social media: Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/JCJCFineArts/ and on Instagram @artatjonescollege.