MONMOUTH, Ill. – An exhibit of paintings by Minnesota artist Christine Willcox will be displayed Feb. 16 through March 19 in Monmouth College’s Len G. Everett Gallery in Hewes Library. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Willcox, an assistant professor of art at Macalester College since 2002, served as a juror for Monmouth’s student art exhibition and competition in the fall of 2002. She received an M.F.A. degree in painting, art theory and criticism from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and a B.A. degree in painting, printmaking, art history and theory from the University of Guelph.

According to the artist, the oil on panel paintings she will display at Monmouth College “at first glance seem to be commonplace or even banal. On a deeper level, these images, from a series titled ‘Brute Neighbors,’ are strange and unsettling.”

Willcox, who is especially interested in images from post-war North America, says her paintings are conceived as individual works but are contextualized in relation to the other works in the series.

The artist adds that she is interested in stories that “reveal the fallacy that scientific experimentation will unequivocally improve our lives. It is the relationship among the component parts and, ultimately, the global and human consequences of our so-called progress that interests me.”

Willcox has had numerous solo exhibitions in Minnesota, New Jersey and Canada, and has been involved with other selected exhibitions throughout the U.S.