A painting by Cameron University’s Jack Crouch, assistant professor of art, has been selected for the first Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC) Members Show. His oil painting, “Amanda,” will be on display from March 1 through mid-April at the Norick Art Center at Oklahoma City University, located at 1608 N.W. 26th Street in Oklahoma City.
Crouch is one of only 27 artists statewide to have works selected for the exhibition.
“I have been experimenting with making an underpainting in vibrant saturated colors and then allowing some of these to show through my more naturalistic overpainting,” Crouch says. “This gives the painting a certain charge and energy that I find appealing."
Crouch joined this faculty at Cameron in August 2021 and teaches painting and drawing. Born and raised in rural Illinois to an artist father and preschool teacher mother, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Western Illinois University in 2009. He then earned a Master of Arts degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Bradley University.
As a young adult, Crouch struggled with addiction. He uses painting and drawing to express the feelings he experienced as a recovering addict, longing for the simplicity of childhood, something no longer attainable to an individual who has experienced the world as he has. His approach to visually articulating his experiences varies from still life paintings where objects are lonely without the indication of human interaction, to large-scale narrative paintings.
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