After over three decades of teaching studio art and art history, including 22 years at Hamline University, Jim Conaway is now a full time studio artist. Jim spends his days in the Minneapolis warehouse district where his studio is located in the Traffic Zone Building, a restored warehouse cooperatively owned and shared by twenty-six artists. In addition to painting, Jim and his wife, Tomie, organize and lead several arts focused international group tours each year. Jim has traveled extensively in Greece, Turkey and Egypt where his past studies and teaching of ancient art history fuel his appreciation and understanding of that part of the world. Jim has been represented by Groveland Gallery for eleven years and has shown extensively throughout the United States, including the Milwaukee Art Museum and Scottsdale Center for the Arts.
"I think of the paintings in this exhibit as dialogues between me and the painting surface. These dialogues are based on a personal sense of aesthetic principles which have developed over the years by observing and experiencing the landscape. An additional component in the dialogue is my longstanding interest in and devotion to fifth century Greek art.
It is my hope that the result of these idealized landscapes, which are invented in my studio, define the spiritual qualities found in nature and reflect the optimism it represents."
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