From February 25 through March 30, 2021, the Northcutt Steele Gallery at MSU Billings is pleased to present Golden Sunlight and Other Works, an exhibition of prints, drawings, and paintings by Whitehall, Montana-based artist, Jerry Rankin.

Rankin was mentored by Rudy Autio and Robert DeWeese, two of the founding figures of Montana Modernism. He received his MFA from University of Montana and has devoted himself to full-time studio art practice since 1985.

Comprised of loans from Missoula Art Museum, Yellowstone Art Museum, and private collectors, Golden Sunlight and Other Works explores two decades of Rankin’s ongoing investigations of boundaries and edges. The works eloquently express the tensions that exist between the natural and man-made worlds, between the body and abstract form, between memory and reality. Repeating references to horizons and passages are found throughout, all depicted in subtle manipulations of texture, form, color and line. The resulting collection offers the artist's moving, poetic meditation on the relationships between personal and physical spaces.

Rankin Fenceline

Jerry Rankin, Fenceline, 2002, powdered graphite on paper, 14.5 x 29 in. Missoula Art Museum Collection. Purchase funded by Miriam Sample, 2003.

In the words of Rankin, "A person, especially an artist, can’t spend any time in Montana without noticing the special importance of boundaries — the line where one field meets another, the line between a river and the landscape it bisects, the lines between the land and the sky."

Rankin’s series of prints, Golden Sunlight, which comprises part of this exhibition is organized by the Missoula Art Museum and is traveling the state under the auspices of the Montana Art Gallery Directors Association (MAGDA).

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