DONALD JURNEY: The Poetry of Place

In the first chapter of Donald Jurney’s career, his focus was rooted in the tradition of landscape painting and painting in plein air. In the artist’s upcoming show at George Billis Gallery in Fairfield, Connecticut, Jurney will showcase 11 paintings in an entirely new genre involving interiors and figures

“I painted the world as it is for a long time. Now I’m enjoying making my own world,” Jurney shares of his new approach. During his time as a landscape painter, the artist explains that he “took many trips to France to draw the landscape. One learns, over the course of years of painting and drawing, a certain vocabulary of forms. Because I could not always find what I wished to paint, I began making ‘my own France’ in paintings. I wanted to tell my own truth about France and so, more and more, I began to paint from imagination. I was much more interested in the poetry of place than in the facts.”

This impulse now informs his new exploration of interiors and figures in interiors. “In imagining the spaces, and in painting figures within them, I become both set designer and casting chief,” Jurney says.