Paintings by June Kilgore at the Birke Art Gallery
Fall 2007
The Birke Art Gallery at Marshall University exhibited paintings by June Kilgore from August 23 to September 14, 2007. Works in the exhibition were acrylics, with some on paper and other, larger ones, on canvas, as well as a few monoprints on paper. Kilgore’s friend and former student, Caryl Toth, gave a talk about the paintings in the gallery on Monday, August 27th, 2007.
June Kilgore (1927-2006) was a professor of art at Marshall University for nearly 25 years and chaired its Department of Art from 1973 until she retired in 1989. Kilgore was from Huntington and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Marshall. She taught in the public schools and Marshall’s “Lab” School before joining the university faculty. In 1972 she earned an MFA in painting and printmaking at the Pratt Institute in New York, where she had studied with the noted Abstract Expressionist, George McNeil.
Like many artists of the later 20th century, Kilgore usually worked in series in order to explore an idea in depth, so some works have nature or gardens as their theme and others focus on Greek temples. With several monoprints from the late 1980s, the majority of works in the exhibition are abstract acrylic paintings from the 1990s that reflect Kilgore’s response to the spirit of place. Kilgore used form, color, texture and space to encapsulate her experience and evoke a parallel response in viewers. Kilgore’s work is in the collections of arts institutions throughout the Southeast as well as many private collections.
Lenders to the exhibition included the Art Store in Charleston, The Huntington Museum of Art, the West Virginia Division of Culture and History and individuals who live in this region.