Bold exploration of belonging drives a fresh trio of voices to Craighead Green Gallery in a new exhibition that challenges visitors to ask: where do we come from, and what does that origin say about who we are today?
Opening a free three-artist show, Faith Scott Jessup, Linda McCall, and Damián Suárez each bring distinct approaches—realism, impressionism, and abstraction—but converge on a shared inquiry into belonging. Their works explore heritage, personal memory, and how imagination shapes self-perception in the world around us.
Gallery director and owner William Bardin describes the curatorial choice as intentional: elevating each artist’s individual platform while highlighting a common thread that links their diverse backgrounds. “We want to give every artist their own platform,” Bardin explains. “But they share a connecting story. They’re all deliberate about the stories, colors, and images they choose.”
For Mexico City–based Suárez, the narrative begins with lineage. His series, “Kinetic Landscape,” carries forward the legacy of Venezuelan artists who inspired him, yet redefines it through a technique that threads thousands of fine lines across wood panels to create shifting fields of color.
“They generate a rhythm, a moiré-like effect,” Bardin notes. “People expect stripes of paint, but the piece is actually composed entirely of thread.” Suárez spent two years preparing these works, digging into kinetic art movements and crafting compositions that blend craft, mathematics, and emotion. With international exposure, this new body of work spotlights the artist’s technique and the cultural threads informing it.
Denton-based Jessup contributes a surrealist sensibility, filling her canvases with floating leaves, patterned fabrics, and natural motifs that hover between reality and imagination. Her series “Duets” presents patterned textiles draped and painted as empty garments, suggesting form without bodies.
“It has a surrealist power that makes you wonder who might be wearing this dress,” Bardin says. “Who identifies with this fabric or clothing?” Jessup’s meticulous brushwork and symbolic motifs create what she calls visual conversations—works rooted in an ongoing dialogue with the natural world, exploring consistency and boundary.
In a separate, more intimate gallery space, Fort Worth artist Linda McCall presents “Rituals,” an impressionist series shaped by memory and mood. Figures often appear alone, moving through soft-edged spaces. Some pieces are sketches from travel; others pull from the texture of daily life.
“Private moments where people are seen walking down a street alone or riding a river in Venice,” Bardin observes. “McCall captures those intimate, private fragments.” Unlike the dialogic tension between Jessup and Suárez, McCall’s paintings exist as standalone explorations of privacy.
While the exhibition isn’t billed as holiday programming, Bardin emphasizes its resonance with the season’s themes. Visitors may find personal connections in the artists’ perspectives, whether through family stories, long-kept memories, or shared human rituals.
“Being with family and exchanging personal stories, catching up with old friends—these are universal impulses that remind us what it means to be human,” Bardin reflects.
Event details:
Dates: December 6 through January 10
Location: Craighead Green Gallery, 167 Parkhouse St, Dallas
Admission: Free
Arts Access is a journalism collaboration between The Dallas Morning News and KERA, supported by the Better Together Fund and a coalition of local foundations and institutions. The partnership commits to full editorial control by The News and KERA.
