Mira Gerard, associate professor of painting, brought a positive breath of life to the art department when she joined the staff in 2001.
Gerard holds a master’s of fine arts in painting and drawing from the University of Georgia in Athens, and a bachelor’s of fine arts in painting from Indiana University in Bloomington.
“I was really excited to come back to Tennessee,” Gerard said. Gerard had lived in Tennessee as a youth. “The area is really special,” she said.
“It’s a challenge to be in a town where the art scene is a little underground. I find it to be a positive thing,” Gerard said of Johnson City.
Now in her second year at ETSU, Gerard is getting to know the community and trying to extend the artworld beyond the classroom, making it more accessible to the public. The recent “Burning Bright” exhibition she organized at Nelson Fine Arts drew a large crowd.
Students from intermediate and advanced painting classes are now doing murals at the Johnson City Medical Center. Gerard has arranged for the painting to continue for several semesters.
Gerard began painting seriously at 19.
“Nature feeds my work,” she said. Her paintings focus primarily on the female figure.
Over time, the paintings have become rooted more and more in fantasy using the element of light as a metaphor. She creates strange invented situations for her figures to exist in.
“Figures in my paintings have to do with the human experience, not just the female experience,” Gerard said.
The central theme is that duality, the interior conflict of feeling more than one way about things is a silent torture we all live with. There’s an idea of mystery about the interior life.”
When Gerard paints, she tries to let the painting come alive and choose its own outcome, rather than force it to happen.
She said paintings are their own entities and have a presence of their own.
“Create your own education,” Gerard advises students of all disciplines.
“Make the most of your life,” she said. “Pick and choose. Find your passion and do it. Make no apologies.”
Gerard has an upcoming solo show of paintings at Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap. “Fragrance and Darkness” opens on Nov. 11.

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