Dr. Art Bacon will be honored with an artist’s reception from 6 until 8 p.m. tonight at the Johnson Center for the Arts. His exhibition “The Art of Art Bacon” is featured in the Lower Gallery of the arts center and “wonderfully” fills the entire space, said Wiley White, JCA exhibition coordinator.

Bacon was a featured artist at the International Art Center earlier in the year and his artwork was very well received.

“We are so excited to have Art Bacon back in Troy,” White said. “We are honor to have ‘The Art of Art Bacon’ at the Johnson Center and we are equally thrilled to have the opportunity for the community to meet him and to hear him talk about his work. It is not possible to view his paintings and not be enthralled by them.”

Bacon did not start out as a visual artist. In graduate school at Howard University, his passion was limited to illustrations for scientific papers. He is credited with discovering a new species of protozoa. But visual art has always been his first passion.

White said Bacon’s subjects of choice are older, neglected people whose expressions show in their faces.

“His earlier works were ink washes and lines,” White said. “He was a minimalist and believed that color interfered with his expression of feeling. But now he uses more color and he is able to create the same feelings – the same wonderful and telling facial expressions –that he created with ink and lines.  Art Bacon’s art has been described as ‘social commentary with a bold vitality’ and I don’t think it could have been described in a better way.”

Galleries that host Bacon’s work include Alabama State University, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Mobile Museum of Art, Heritage Museum, University of Maryland, Comer Museum and Opryland.

His work has been featured in such highly acclaimed magazines as “Southern Living” and “Black Art in America.”

Bacon is retired from Talladega College and was recently named Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences and Humanities. He continues to paint, perhaps more than ever, and occasionally writes and recites poetry.