philip juras
landscapes.” Only later did the names William Bartram and Philip Juras fully register. Dallmeyer went straight back to the gallery. “Here were these magnificent landscapes—some nearly seven feet wide—all inspired by Bartram’s travels. Plus the explanatory notes were beautifully written. I went to UGA librarian Rene Shoemaker and asked, ‘Who is Philip Juras and how do I get in touch with him?’” After making contact, they became friends. Dorinda, who directs the environmental ethics certificate program at UGA, also became a collector. “Most of the landscapes appearing in the anthology and in the Telfair Museum exhibition catalog were painted since Philip and I first crossed paths. For me it has been such a thrill to see Philip’s ideas and fieldwork metamorphose into visions of the southern frontier, to answer the question so many of us have: ‘What did this landscape I now live in look like centuries ago?’” Juras currently has over 90 paintings on display. With his studio nearly empty, he checks out inspiring places, sometimes tipped off by friends like Dallmeyer. On a recent drive to Savannah, they took a detour. “I took Philip to the outskirts of Milledgeville
to look at a pretty unlikely place: an old gully being reclaimed by trees,” says Dallmeyer. “What makes this place special is that it was first described by Sir Charles Lyell, the eminent British geologist, during his visit to America in 1843. Lyell was fascinated at how rapidly erosion had taken place just twenty years after the forests were cleared for agriculture. This place was so significant to Lyell that the gully was the only engraving included in the entire second volume of his journal. Now that Philip knows its location, I expect the gully will make a new appearance, this time on canvas.” Juras considers this. “It‘s such an unnatural and disturbed site, I’m not sure how I’d approach it,” he says uncertainly. “But it is a great example of how the region has changed, so it deserves further exploration.” Mostly, inspiration for Juras comes courtesy of Mother Nature, or is ushered into his consciousness by music. When painting in the rustic studio behind his downtown Athens
home, Juras likes caffeinated music with a high tempo. “Anything from Ella Fitzgerald to the Talking Heads and the Beatles. I love the dissonant brass of Stan Kenton’s orchestra.” He also likes local music, including Five Eight and The Modern Skirts. “Painting is a high-energy endeavor, a sort of battle to both lose and maintain control at the same time. The music really helps.” So does time in the field, especially with a fire approaching when he paints as fast as possible. He volunteers with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ prescribed fire program, and gets an adrenalin jolt doing field painting in broad strokes on site at controlled burns. Fire is a large theme in the work Juras does—after settlement, much of the South transformed into what he described as a patchwork of pine plantations. The suppression of fires meant a suppression of selfrenewing grassy woodlands. He has written that field paintings are a “reality check—an orientation to
The Southern Frontier: Landscapes Inspired by Bartram’s Travels presents over 60 of Juras’ paintings. The works offer glimpses of the pre-settlement southern wilderness as late 18th-century naturalist William Bartram would have experienced it during his famed travels through the region.
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