Arts
April 20, 2009
NICHOLAS ROOT / The Dartmouth Staff
Professor Colleen Randall relies on multiple layers of paint, a variety of textures and a certain level of artistic subtlety to visually balance calm and turbulence in her collection, "Livia's Walls: New Paintings and Works on Paper," currently on display at the Strauss Gallery in the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
A member of the Dartmouth studio art faculty for 20 years, Randall currently teaches Painting 2 and 3, as well as a senior seminar.
Randall was abroad last Spring term in Italy studying Roman paintings, which she said served as an inspiration for the pieces now exhibited in the Strauss Gallery.
"I began to be interested in wall paintings and knew about these garden paintings from the House of Livia in Prima Porta from the first century B.C., so I wrote a grant and received a writing fellowship to go to Rome to study these paintings," Randall said.
Randall applied several layers of rich, earthy color to each of her works, creating paintings that evoke a sense of nature.