November 20th – December 12th, 2020
Fridays & Saturdays from 4pm – 8pm
M.I.B. Gallery
48 E. Main Street
Buckhannon, WV 26201
ART26201 will present Vigilance is King, a fine art exhibition by Buckhannon artist CaseyEarl Mills on Friday, November 20, 2020, with a special opening artist’s reception from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Colonial Theatre Gallery. Mills will speak about his collection of introspective paintings at 6 p.m.
Keeping with current COVID-19 safety and social distancing protocols, ART26201 will be offering collectible masks at the event.
In addition to the opening event November 20, the Colonial Theatre Gallery will be open November 21, from 4 to 8 p.m., and the following three weekends through December 12, on Fridays and Saturdays, from 4 to 8 p.m.
Significant financial assistance for the Colonial Theatre Rehabilitation project has been provided by the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History.
ABOUT CASEYEARL MILLS
CaseyEarl Mills is a painter, illustrator, graphic designer, embroiderer, and printer. Born in Beckley, the lifelong resident of West Virginia has been drawing and painting since the age of four. A 1996 graduate of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Mills holds a degree in visual communication. He formed CASEYEARL’S, LLC, a full-service embroidery, screen print, sign, banner, decal, graphic and web design shop, in 2017 and currently resides in Buckhannon.
ARTIST STATEMENT
To understand what I am attempting to convey in recent works, the viewer needs a bit of my backstory, at least the last five years. I moved to Buckhannon after suffering the misery and loss of my emotional and physical health, along with my all of my material wealth to go with it. The crux of what I have suffered has been by no fault but my own. Twice in the past 25 years, I have made huge gains in life, just to lose them all by my own volition.
In 2016, at age 40, I arrived here in Buckhannon after hitting bottom for the second time. Humiliation is the word I would use for what emotion I was feeling at that time. It was the emotion to prove most appropriate, and moreover vital, for the changes I desperately needed in my psyche to approach life and achieve a level of peace I can be satisfied living with. The humiliation brought me to a place where I was finally willing to practice complete responsibility for my life, daring to look in the mirror of my past deeds and continuing further into what I claimed to believe at the core of my being, both subjective and objective truth. This is a discipline I am in no way a master at, I might add!
After having the courage to let go of long held claims and views, I have shifted my focus to understanding what I call God, Spirit, Now, Self, Heart, Soul, Mind, Wisdom, Grace, Faith, Belief, Mercy, Justice, Happiness, Peace, Beauty, Love, and Hope. All of those, and more, have changed not by will, but by simply acknowledging the laws of my own personal experience and guarding the memory of these laws. Experience is what I believe flows out of the heart of being itself, Stories of The Self to write the Laws of Life. That is where my works of art begin today! The word “art” means “being” to me, and my paintings aren’t “being,” they are “works of being,” metaphoric images of change brought about by an intimacy of self.