47 East 200 North St. George, UT 84770 (435) 627-4525 museum@sgcity.org Mon - Sat: 10am - 5pm 3rd Thursday 10am - 9pm Return to Current Exhibits Return to Past Exhibits Return to Future Exhibits Shakespeare as Muse by Gina Jrel Show available: June 13, 2009 through September 12, 2009 Local artist, Gina Jrel, is a contemporary, stylized painter. Inspired by Picasso, Modigliani, Klimt, and the Art nouveau movement, Jrel’s unusual painting style is a whimsical, colorful combination of geometric abstraction, and spontaneous gesture painting. A painter for 31 years, Jrel earned her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. Her work has been displayed in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Kansas City, New York City, Salt Lake City and locally. Her murals and paintings adorn walls, floors, and ceilings throughout the southwestern United States. Jrel’s art has been licensed for use by corporations throughout the country and is in private collections worldwide. Her bohemian warehouse painting studio, The Loft (in Arrow Business Park at 928 N. Westridge Drive), is open to the public in St. George where she shows her work and teaches classes. Gina left the commercial art world with the intent that her efforts and work were used for things that are not always for profit. She generously shares her time and talent with many nonprofit organizations. She works in a variety of 2D and 3D media, the bulk of her work is oil and acrylic on canvas with embellishments. While she began drawing at age 3, she is most inspired and most productive between 3-5am. She has Synesthesia which is where text forms are seen in colors. According to the free online dictionary, “synesthesia, synaesthesia Is defined medically as a secondary sensation accompanying an actual perception, as the perceiving of sound as a color or the sensation of being touched in a place at some distance from the actual place of touching. Jrel’s work can also be seen locally in The Loft, and at Juniper Fine Art Gallery in Kayenta in Ivins and Manzanita Trading Company in Springdale, Utah. Her website is www.gina-jrel-art.com . As she believes in going beyond realism into the feelings behind the seen, the Shakespeare plays are a natural subject in which to explore and translate the words and meanings into visual form. Some of the plays depicted include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet.