Bill Rutherfoord, Deception (Spring), 2008-2013, Oil on linen, 70" x 74"

Organized by the Taubman Museum of Art, this exhibition presents the culmination of eight years of concentrated labor producing a massive painting project by one of Southwestern Virginia's most respected artists. Eleven large-scale, colorful and densely populated paintings invite the viewer into a complex interweaving of narrative, symbol, and form. Inspiration is drawn from artistic and literally figures as divergent as Jean Cocteau, Jasper Johns, and Joel Chandler Harris while historical references extend from Jamestown to Fort Sumter to the BP Gulf oil disaster. The reclaimed character Brer Rabbit leads the viewer on an epic journey across three centuries of heroism and trickery, both comic and tragic, ultimately creating historical and contemporary allegories and conundrums that lead to an investigation of the very nature of identity, culture, and history - personal and public, regional and national, high and low.