KCAI Faculty Display Recent Paintings in Greenlease Gallery

Artists Julie Farstad and Jessie Fisher will exhibit works in their upcoming show, Hardcore Paintings: Confessions and Premonitions, which opens to the public with a reception from 7-9 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11, in the Greenlease Library. Farstad and Fisher will present a talk at 6:30 p.m.

Farstad, assistant professor of painting at the Kansas City Art Institute, is a third-wave feminist painter whose work explores the conflation of fiction and experience. In her work, Farstad primarily employs children’s toys as surrogates in order to explore the psychological drama of girlhood.

Fisher, also an assistant professor of painting at KCAI, is a figurative painter who creates hybrid form through an indirect process. Her subjects hover between ideal construction and observed sensation.

Both artists have exhibited their work nationally. Farstad has had solo exhibitions in New York and Chicago. She received a bachelor’s degree in painting from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in painting from the University of Illinois, graduating summa cum laude from both institutions.

Fisher has exhibited her work in Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Kansas City. She earned her bachelor’s in fine arts from the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in painting and drawing from the University of Iowa. She has studied at the Scoula Internationale della Grafica in Venice, Italy, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

The Greenlease Gallery is located between Van Ackeren and Sedgwick halls on the Rockhurst University campus, 54th Street and Troost Avenue. The gallery is open to the public from noon to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and the exhibit runs Feb. 11-March 19. For more information, contact gallery director at (816) 501-4407.