“Path of Light,” an exhibition featuring new paintings and drawings by artist Brent Funderburk, will open at the Meridian Museum of Art with a public reception from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 4.
A Mississippi resident, Funderburk is a 2024 Mississippi Governor’s Arts Award recipient and William L. Giles Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Mississippi State University.
Funderburk will be in attendance at the reception to speak about “Path of Light,” which will be on display at the Meridian Museum of Art until Nov. 30. The exhibition will feature 105 works, spanning from 1979 to 2024, and will include 70 from the past six years when he retired from full-time teaching at MSU in 2018. The works represent watermedia and oil paintings, pastel, graphite, charcoal and mixed media. Many have never been exhibited publicly, and some are on loan from private and public collections.
In association with the art museum, Funderburk will give an illustrated lecture at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3, at the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience in conjunction with a new touring exhibit at The MAX, “The South’s Most Reclusive Artist: Walter Inglis Anderson.” Funderburk has taught university courses and curated national touring shows of Anderson’s art.
His public lecture at The MAX, titled “Inside Nature: Chasing the Path of Light Through Watercolor,” will explore “the mysterious power and subtle majesty of watercolor in art history and unexpected discoveries the medium has illuminated throughout my life,” the artist said in a news release.
Known for his large, exuberantly hued watermedia paintings, as well as his energetic teaching and lectures, Funderburk, a North Carolina native, taught at MSU for 36 years and was recognized with some of the university’s highest academic, teaching and research honors, according to the release. Over a 40-year-period, he worked as a teacher and administrator for three universities.
The Meridian Museum of Art, as well as the Mississippi Museum of Art, hosted Funderburk’s debut one-person show, titled “The Breathing Eye,” during a tour in 1984-85. Works from that show are included in this new exhibit, as well as artwork from his 1986 solo show, “A New Earth,” also presented at the Meridian Museum of Art. Funderburk won Best of Show with his work, “Mirror, Mirror,” at the Meridian museum’s annual juried Bi-State Competition and Exhibition in 1985. “Mirror, Mirror” is among the works to be exhibited, along with the signature painting, “Path of Light,” which is the largest watermedia work created by the artist at nearly 8 feet in width.
The exhibition also will include several series of drawings and paintings featuring Funderburk’s forays into the American West, where he and his wife, Debby, often summer. Roughly 40 drawings were completed in situ in the Rio Arriba region of New Mexico during the past seven years, as well as larger acrylic works executed with painting knives on canvas. “Path of Light” also presents Funderburk’s drawings from Mississippi, the Appalachian Mountains, Mexico and Italy.
The Meridian Museum of Art is located at 628 25th Ave. in downtown Meridian. The museum’s public viewing hours are from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is always free.