Artist and poet James Tughan to visit NWC

Canadian artist and poet James Tughan will visit Northwestern College Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 10 and 11, as part of the college’s Ronald R. Nelson Scholars and Artists in Residence Program.

Tughan will speak during Northwestern’s chapel at 10:05 Monday morning and 11:05 Tuesday morning in Christ Chapel. He will also present his drawings and poetry Monday at 7 p.m. in the Te Paske Gallery as part of a joint art exhibit reception and Deep Song event presented by the college’s art and English departments. Deep Song is a Northwestern reading series that invites authors to campus to read from their published or upcoming works. Tughan’s artwork will remain on display at Northwestern through Dec. 12.

Entitled “Triage: New Drawings and Poetry from the Forest Psalter,” the exhibit and reading are a celebration of the bonds that connect people in relationship and sustain them in adversity. Tughan’s large-scale drawings—created in chalk pastels on Arches paper—are a marriage of aerial visual mapping, natural symbolism, and a Christian theology of the person. The imagery draws metaphors for the seen and unseen world from the natural surface topography of the visual subject matter itself, utilizing amazing details and surface patterning, texture, color, lighting and narrative possibilities.

One of the world’s foremost pastel artists, Tughan grew up in Toronto and studied architecture, theology and fine art in college. His career as an artist, illustrator and design consultant spans 37 years, and his work has been commissioned by major corporations throughout North America and by such magazines as Rolling Stone, Esquire, Saturday Night, and House & Garden.

Tughan is part of the art faculty at Redeemer University College in Ontario and is a founding member of the Semaphore Institute and its mentoring programs for children, adolescents, college students and international groups of artists in churches. It is with the latter group that his landmark exhibition and seminar ministry, the Dreaming of Lions Project, has traveled throughout Canada, the United States, China, Bulgaria, Colombia, England and Egypt.

The Te Paske Gallery is located in the Thea G. Korver Visual Arts Center, on Highway 10 at 214 8th Street SW in Orange City. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to midnight Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to midnight Sunday.