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Curated by Rob Evans

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Overview:  This exhibit, which includes approximately 60 works, examines the influence of the Susquehanna River as an artistic muse and commercial driver for prominent American artists who, over several centuries, explored the river’s shores and utilized its imagery as part of a greater initiative to promote the American landscape. These artists worked in a diverse range of media often experimenting with some of the newest technologies of the day including wood, copper and steel engravings; hand colored lithographs and chromolithographs; etchings; transfer decorated china; and paintings and drawings. Many of the prints, framed individually in the exhibit, were used to illustrate elaborately bound oversized coffee table books and portfolios which marketed the American landscape as a picturesque destination, and are displayed in the exhibit alongside actual copies of the books in which they appeared. In all, the exhibit presents a unique portrait a single subject over four centuries, documenting, through the eyes of artists, the Susquehanna's many moods and manifestations, as well as the progression of human habitation and development along its shores.

Background: For nearly four decades artist and independent curator Rob Evans has lived, raised a family and worked in his studio on a ridge overlooking the Susquehanna River in eastern York County, PA. Evans' ties to the Susquehanna run deep as both his parents were raised along its shores, his mother on adjoining property to his farm, and his father further upriver near Wilkes Barre, PA. Most of Evans' paintings and drawings depict the Susquehanna River Valley landscape and its flora/fauna, whether metaphorically or through direct observation.

In 2005 Evans embarked on a curatorial project to explore his roots as a Susquehanna painter and the resulting traveling exhibit, "Visions of the Susquehanna: 250 Years of Paintings by American Masters," featured works by such renowned American landscape painters as Benjamin West, Joshua Shaw, Thomas Doughty, Sanford Gifford, Thomas Moran, Jasper Cropsey, George Inness, and Charles Demuth among others.

While Visions of the Susquehanna focused primarily on major studio paintings intended for exhibit in expositions and which eventually disappeared into the homes of wealthy private collectors, Drawing on the Susquehanna takes a slightly different angle, exploring the artists direct engagement with their public through the dissemination of their work via commercial partnerships with various industries and businesses, utilizing the most current printing technologies available to them. Through mass publication worldwide in maps, books, portfolios, journals, magazines, newspapers and decorated china they not only self-promoted but helped make the Susquehanna one of the most popular and well known rivers worldwide along with its sister east coast river, the Hudson. Even before the Hudson River School of landscape painting took shape, the Susquehanna played a role in influencing and inspiring some of the first truly American artists, writers and poets. Although no formal "Susquehanna School" of painters has ever been delineated, this exhibit argues that such an influential school has taken shape over the last several centuries and continues to this day.

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