Fairview artist’s paintings of musicians decorate center’s music wing

Release Date: 4/15/2004. Expired: 5/21/2004

Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Bob Dylan, Elvis and several other rock and blues legends are hanging around outside the music classrooms at The Renaissance Center. A new collection of paintings by Fairview artist Jackie Underwood is on display in the center’s north wing.

Ten of Underwood’s modern art portraits of famous musicians will be displayed through May 21.

A Shelbyville native, Underwood is a self-taught painter/artist who loved to draw and paint as a child. After a 12-year career as a house painter, health reasons forced him to give up that profession. Underwood then devoted his painting talents to more artistic endeavors.

His paintings include watercolors, acrylic and oils, and range from subjects such as zany cats and dogs to world-famous musicians, all in vivid colors.

The pieces on display at The Renaissance Center are acrylic portraits of musicians such as Hendrix, King, Dylan, Presley, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Big Bill Broonzy, Miles Davis and Blind Lemon Jefferson. They reflect Underwood’s love of blues music, while other pieces in his collection of works show hints of his appreciation for Pablo Picasso and other classics.

“Jackie is definitely an artist with more than one style,” said Curtis Southerland, curator for The Renaissance Center’s art displays. “On the one hand, his modern style is reflected in the musician portraits while on the other hand he is more classic in the style of Picasso and Van Gogh in other pieces.”

All of Underwood’s pieces on display at the center are available for purchase. The pieces range in size from 24X30 to 30X40 with prices from $350 to $900.

Underwood’s art has been sold throughout the country, greatly helped by his brother, a long-haul trucker who carried some of Underwood’s art on trips and sold it at truck stops. Underwood also has created paintings of Bible stories that another brother used in Sunday school lessons as a minister for a Church of God of Prophecy.

A portrait Underwood created of comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy hangs in the Laurel and Hardy Museum in Harlem, Ga.

Underwood has been invited several times to display his art at the recently opened B.B. King’s Restaurant in Nashville, where he has sold several pieces. He just recently completed an exhibit in the Brentwood Library.

Underwood’s paintings will be on display in The Renaissance Center’s north wing through May 21. For more information on art displays at the center, contact Southerland at (615)740-5519. Admission to the center and all of its art displays is always free.

The Renaissance Center is an arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.

Visit the Visual Arts Gallery page for more about the gallery.

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