Kayla Coleman ’14: Jackie Tileston’s “Encounters Upon Walking” is the latest exhibit to adorn the walls of the Crawford Campus Gallery. The exhibit focuses Tilestons oil paintings as well as her mixed media on linen. At first, viewers may just be attracted to the exhibit’s bursting blur of colors with streaks, splashes and smudges of designs in between, but Tileston’s work has more meaning that just its energetic aesthetic. Her work for this gallery was inspired by Taoist landscapes, regal colors and concepts of Indian artwork, and models of contemporary science. Tileston also incorporates Western traditions, including post modernism, 20th century abstraction, and premises of Monet and impressionism in her distinctive body of work. Tileston’s work has previously been displayed in the Zg Gallery in Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and most recently, in Philadelphia’s Pentimenti Gallery in Old City.
According to the Crawford Campus Center Gallery’s official statement on the exhibit, “The swishing of celestial forms that intersect with the thick chunks of paint create a mystical and intriguing world. She allows her paintings to range from slow and contemplative to ecstatic and sensory overload, wanting them to function as integrative systems.”
Tileston’s birth in Manila in the Philippines and her cross-cultural and international concepts of one unified, utopian idealistic world shape her paintings to coalesce her concepts and inspirations with the actual product on view. Stepping outside of the typical division of visual artwork, “Encounters upon Walking” is a gamble that the Crawford Campus Center Gallery has never taken before, in line with the art department’s recent focus in exploring modern, more experimental and non-traditional forms of art, as well as integrating Episcopal with the broader art world.
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