Description

Plein air and studio artist Joel Sheesley exhibits 73 landscapes — painted over a two-year period in all seasons — depicting the Fox River and watershed from West Dundee to Ottawa where the Fox River joins the Illinois River. The exhibit explores issues of mortality and permanence as the artist positions landscape art as a means to deepen our experience and appreciation of nature. The Earth is the repository of all human and nonhuman history. In taking the Earth as motif, the artist addresses, through landscape, one of the most consequential subjects of our time. Joel Sheesley, emeritus professor of art at Wheaton College, is a painter whose current work focuses on the landscape. He has been a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship, has exhibited work in Chicago galleries and had a solo exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center. His work has also been exhibited widely in university galleries. The Conservation Foundation’s Fox River Initiative is an environmental education and outreach program about the Fox River and the Fox Valley. Through “Art of the Fox” the foundation hopes to broaden interest in the health of the Fox River by appealing to the river’s aesthetic value. In partnership with The Conservation Foundation's Fox River Initiative