Epiklesis Fine Art

Your Bio

In addition to teaching art history, I have been working for some years now as a fine art photographer and painter. Having exhibited my work in various venues over the last several years, I am now utilizing this website as a means for reaching new audiences. After this introduction and two galleries of "Artists' Favorites," the subsequent galleries begin with the photographs that I showed in “Mural Magnificats,” my one-person gallery exhibit in Manhattan in September, 2007. Also in the galleries below, a gallery of my paintings presents several works from the last decade. I have generally produced only one or two paintings a year. While the imagery appears comparatively reductive, each work actually requires months for its gestation, working, and reworking.

In whatever medium I work, my art focuses on the power of abstract form to bear meaning. Looking at art professionally has sensitized me to that power, which has then confronted me in natural terrains and cultural constructions as well. Beauty is scattered everywhere... lavishly. I hope that my artwork bears witness to that fact.

I generally present my photographs in an 8"x12" format, matted in a black, 16"x20" wood frame. (The watermarks visible in the photo galleries will obviously not appear on any prints.) I will happily discuss larger prints. For questions about purchasing photographs, email me at rob@epiklesis.com... or click on the red link below.

At any time, click on the blue Morandi quote in the header to return to this home page.

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Featured Galleries

Artist's Favorites #1 :

Artist's Favorites #1

Updated: Apr 02, 2009 11:58am PST

Artist's Favorites #2 :

Artist's Favorites #2

Updated: Sep 16, 2010 3:40pm PST

Paintings :

Paintings

Updated: Apr 23, 2009 10:57pm PST

Deep Surface - Europe, 2010 :

Deep Surface - Europe, 2010

Updated: Sep 26, 2010 9:46pm PST

Galleries

Mural Magnificats Show, Fall, 2007 : “Mural Magnificats”: Artist’s Statement Rob Meadows-Rogers, Photographer Email me What has one agreed to see, when one sees? Miracles abound, but the addictions of bluster and anxiety deny them entry. Indeed, the delicacy of miracle recoils equally from the obstinate eye and from a fastidious and squeamish myopia. These optical maladies also abound... in me, certainly no less than in others. Yet, for all that, the miraculous, with stalwart grace, declines to disappear. In the peripheral blur of the ego’s focus, the miracle persistently beckons enlarged vision. One cannot, thank God, defeat it. Yet, from those who would receive annunciations, miracles demand humility and refuse timidity. At the same time, miracles also humble themselves (kenosis): they willingly gestate one’s dreams and partner one’s longings, while one’s attention fertilizes them. They grow larger, as do their beholders. As the photographs in this exhibition hopefully demonstrate, the miraculous incarnations of a transcendent beauty can transfigure travel into pilgrimage. Often this beauty has most dumbfounded me with its wooing of time-worn or defaced walls “of no importance.” Exactly there, on diffident surfaces “beneath notice,” the miraculous has seduced me with revelatory textures, colors, lines, and shapes. I both attend and respond to these miraculous assemblages through the camera’s lens, which “magnifies” them. In this way, the photograph praises. It becomes a magnificat. It renders the experiential field as a hymn by clarifying, versifying, and harmonizing the miraculous as a pictorial image. I require this song, this photographic magnificat. I would wither without a capacity for articulating such fundamental recognitions, so elemental a gratitude. Contemporary digital techniques have strengthened my optical hymnody. With more precise control over hue, saturation, tonality, and contrast, I can tune my vision more exactly. However, I never submerge the phenomenon beneath the artifice. I remain committed to the miraculous as a vector within lived experience and to the photograph as an aesthetic constellation of that experience. For the same reason, because I do not see in black-and-white, I take only color photographs. Combining some comments by Ansel Adams and Edvard Munch, I can say that I do not take photographs of what I see; I make photographs of what I saw. I technically caress the image until it occasions the ecstasy I remember. With regard to the synergy between material reality and the photograph, unmediated sensory data have no more credibility than pure artifice, and neither of these can stir the spirit’s deepest trajectories. A congealed phenomenalism or a willful artifice can only devise metaphors for despair, whether of the journalistic or mannerist variety. This, in turn, results in either a diagnostic or reflexive art-about-problems. Although we may often require such diagnoses or reflexions, I personally aim for an art-about-answers, an art that scans for beauty’s defiant solace, especially in unlikely venues... like the garret where Géricault piled and painted “portraits” of those severed limbs (Delacroix called them “best argument for beauty, rightly understood”)... like the gallery where Duchamp, that sprite, choreographed his plumbing fixtures and his shovels with what, at least in retrospect, looks like nothing so much as tenderness. The magnificats I attempt with my pictures culminate only in exhibition. As the miraculous always necessitates a magnificat (prayer or hymn, painting or photograph), so it creates a longing for community; enlightening, it always seeks a crescendo in brighter light. Likewise, for me, the miracle, the magnificat, and the Mass simply denote the three sides of the same sacramental coin. Email me

Mural Magnificats Show, Fall, 2007

“Mural Magnificats”: Artist’s Statement Rob Meadows-Rogers, Photogra ...

Updated: Jan 10, 2009 12:02pm PST

New England Abstracts: Summer, 2007 :

New England Abstracts: Summer, 2007

Updated: Jan 10, 2009 12:21pm PST

Portuguese Splendor: July, 2008 : In late July, 2008, my wife and I spent twelve glorious days in Portugal, traveling to COIMBRA (the site of Portugal’s oldest university), CONIMBRIGA (the largest excavation of an ancient Roman city in Portugal), TOMAR (headquarters of the medieval and Renaissance Knights Templar), EVORA (one of those “untouched” medieval cities, with nearby Neolithic and Roman ruins to boot), ARRAIOLOS (with a hilltop castle, enclosing a Renaissance church), and LISBON (museums, churches, and romantic scenes galore). In this gallery, however, I have included only my fine art photographs from our trip, leaving the travelogue photos to other venues. Email me

Portuguese Splendor: July, 2008

In late July, 2008, my wife and I spent twelve glorious days in Portug ...

Updated: Dec 09, 2008 10:37pm PST

Lusitanian Geometries and Abstractions: July, 2008 :

Lusitanian Geometries and Abstractions: July, 2008

Updated: Apr 02, 2009 11:59am PST

Architectural and Other Abstracts: New York City, 2009 :

Architectural and Other Abstracts: New York City, 2009

Updated: Feb 16, 2009 12:25pm PST

Nature & Abstraction, Zihuatanejo, Mexico, March, 2009 :

Nature & Abstraction, Zihuatanejo, Mexico, March, 2009

Updated: Apr 03, 2009 8:49am PST

Curriculum Vitae : Email me   ROBERT DENTON MEADOWS-ROGERS, PH.D. New York, New York email: rob@epiklesis.com EDUCATION: Duke University, B.A., summa cum laude, 1971 (major: religion) Union Theological Seminary, New York, M.Div., 1974       (major: psychiatry and religion) State University of New York, Oneonta, 1984-85, no degree       (undergraduate and graduate courses in art history) The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill       1985-86: nonmatriculated graduate student       May, 1989: M.A. awarded in art history             M.A. Thesis: The Learned Artist and Virgil:             Time and Providence in Rubens'             Landscape with Stone Carriers       May, 1997: Ph.D. awarded in art history             Dissertation: "The Terza Loggia in the Vatican Palace and             the Patronage of Pope Gregory XIII (1572-1585): Decorative             Innovation and Urban Ideology before Sixtus V"   NON-ACADEMIC WORK HISTORY: 1971-1973: (part time and full time): community mental health worker, Dept.       of Community Psychiatry, The Roosevelt Hospital, New York, New York 1974-1977 and 1980-1985: Pastor in United Methodist Churches, New York Conference       (Note: since 1999, a Roman Catholic layman) 1977-1980: Assistant to the Director of Special Events, The Museum of Modern       Art, New York, New York   TEACHING EXPERIENCE: 1986-1991: grading and teaching assistantships in the art and the religious studies departments, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Summer, 1989:       Modern Art: University of North Carolina at Greensboro       High Renaissance to 20th-Century Art: UNC, Chapel Hill January, 1990 - July, 1992:       Visiting Instructor, part-time       North Carolina State University, Raleigh       Courses: art history surveys, ancient to contemporary Fall Quarter, 2002, and Fall Quarter, 2003: Visiting Faculty Member Liturgical Institute/Mundelein Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois Course: “Liturgy, Art, and Architecture” August, 1992 - August, 2004:       Assistant Professor (tenured), Department of Art (Chair, 1997-2000)       Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota       Committee and Community Service:       Department Chair (1997-2000), Curriculum Committee, International       Education Committee, Community Relations Committee, Credo (Honors) Committee,            Faculty Evaluation Committees, Student Orientation Advisor Spring, 2005:       Adjunct Professor, Queensboro Community College, Queens, New York Fall, 2004 to Present:       Adjunct Professor, Art History, Fordham University, Bronx, New York (two           courses/semester: Survey of Western Art History; Aesthetics/Art & Ethics) STUDY/TRAVEL SEMINARS: During the month of May, for nine of the twelve years that I taught at Concordia, I led undergraduate travel seminars to various destinations in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, always including at least ten days in Italy.  These nine seminars, for which the college granted a full-course credit, focused on different academic agendas, depending on the itinerary.  ---In addition, in the spring semester of 2004, I co-led a semester-abroad program for honors students to Greece, Italy, and Russia.   AWARDS AND HONORS: High School Valedictorian (class of 750), June, 1967 Phi Beta Kappa, Duke University, 1971 The Travelling Fellowship, Union Theological Seminary, 1974 University of North Carolina Art Department Travel Grant (Italy), 1987 Pollard Grant, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill:       Fall, 1987; Fall, 1988; Fall, 1989; Fall, 1990 Kress Fellow (dissertation fellowship) for the academic year 1995-1996 Sabbatical Leave, Concordia College, Fall Semester, 2002 Who’s Who in America, 2003 Edition Who’s Who among America’s Teachers, 2003, 2006-2007 Edition   PUBLICATIONS and EXHIBITIONS: Article: "Procession and Return: Bacchus, Poussin, and the Conquest of Ancient Territory," Athanor 9, 1990 (journal of the Dept. of Art, Florida State University Exhibitions (10): Annual Faculty Art Show, Concordia College Art Department: 1993-2002:: Photographs and Paintings Book Review: Robin Margaret Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London & New York: Routledge, 2000) in Dialog: A Journal of Theology, vol. 40, no. 2 (Summer, 2001), pp. 157-159. Book Review: Helen de Borchgrave, A Journey into Christian Art (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000) in Dialog: A Journal of Theology, vol. 40, no. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 316-317. Exhibition: Photographs: “Encounters: Egypt and Greece”: Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND,January-March, 2002 Gallery Exhibition Catalog Essay: “Timothy Ray: Between Precision and Improvisation,” Cyrus M. Running Gallery, Concordia College, Moorhead, MN, September 2 - October 14, 2002. Exhibition: Juried One-Person Photography Exhibition: “Mural Magnificats.”  The       Galleries at the Interchurch Center, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, New York.         September - October, 2007.   Selected Lectures and PRESENTATIONS:   "Vatican Prospects, 1582": Paper presented at the College Art Association Annual Meeting, New York, February 17, 1994.   “Faith and Knowledge: the Visual Arts”: Paper presented to the faculty, Concordia College, January, 1995.   “Virgin Territory: The Fate of the Figure in Italian Renaissance Art," Presentation at the Concordia College "Communiversity," Minneapolis, MN, February 11, 1996.   “Postures of Faith: The Stance of the Figure and Devotional Values,” Presentation at the Concordia College "Communiversity," Minneapolis, MN, February, 1997.   “Visual Pneumatologies: Form, Color and Light, Space and Place,” 3 Lectures at the First Presbyterian Church, Fargo, N.D., September 14, 21, 28, 1997.   “‘I could have done that!’: The Iconology of Abstraction and the Questions of the Referent,” Presentation to be given at the Concordia College "Communiversity," Minneapolis, MN, February, 1998.   “Shapers of the Landscape and the Values of Landscape Painting” (4 lectures), Fargo-Moorhead Communiversity, February 7, 14, 21, 28, 1998.   “Optical Condensations,” gallery talk, Running Gallery, Concordia, December 1, 1998.   “The Stylistic Nuancing of the Annunciation,” presentation at First Presbyterian Church, Fargo, December 9, 1998.   “Androgyny and the Depiction of Divinity,” presentation at First Presbyterian Church, Fargo, December 16, 1998.   “The Architecture of the Church of the Nativity, Fargo, ND: A Place to Be, a Place to Find,” 17 March 1999.   Presentation & Interdisciplinary Panel Participant in Connection with the Guthrie Theater’s Presentation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: University of Minnesota at Moorhead, March 24, 2000.   “The Sublime in Music, Art, and Religion,” Presentation at First Presbyterian Church, Moorhead, Minnesota, Spring, 2000.   Panel Participant: “Wow Them and They Will Come: Bringing a Consumer Public into Today’s Art Museum,” Faith, Reason, and World Affairs Symposium, September, 2001.   “Latin American Painting,” lecture for Tri-College Spanish History Course, 1/23/01.   Paper Presentation: “Art for Art’s Sake/Art for the Church’s Sake,” “Building the Church for 2010,” Annual Conference of The Liturgical Institute, Mundelein Seminary, University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, Illinois, 31 October 2002.   Panel Discussion: Respondent and Participant, “Building the Church for 2010,” Annual Conference, The Liturgical Institute, Mundelein Seminary, University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, Illinois, 1 November 2002.   Paper Presentation: “Notes from a Catholic Pilgrimage to the Temple of Art,” Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, Annual Conference, “Epiphanies of Beauty: The Arts in a Post-Christian World,” November 16-18, 2004.   Paper Presentation: “Focus/Frame: The Historical and Contemporary Vocation of the Arts to the Liturgy,” Notre Dame Center for Liturgy Annual Conference, University of Notre Dame, June 20-22, 2005.   Scholar-in-Residence Presentation: “Art and Incarnation,” Trinity Presbyterian Church, Prescott, Arizona, December 12, 2006.   Presentation: “A Liminal Luminosity: Chagall & Matisse,” Presbytery Retreat, Hudson River Presbytery, Union Church, Pocantico Hills, New York, April 17, 2007. 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Curriculum Vitae

Email me   ROBERT DENTON MEADOWS-ROGERS, PH.D. New York, ...

Updated: Jan 15, 2009 8:10pm PST