Stillness in Bloom: Botanicals and Landscape by Rowan Pope and Bly Pope

Bly Pope is a professional studio artist with a continuing interest in hyperrealism and traditional fine arts.  He graduated from Stanford University and received his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Minnesota, where he has been an Adjunct Professor for over 15 years, teaching classes in Drawing, Graphic Novel Illustration, and Artistic Interpretation from Vintage Cinema.  He has also taught at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design for 10 years, in Foundation: 2D, and The Interactive Visual Novel.  His work has been shown and awarded in numerous exhibitions, and has been purchased by The Cafesjian Museum of Fine Art in Armenia and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  His drawing, “Maryanna,” was selected to be a part of the National Portrait Competition Exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery throughout 2013-2014 and was purchased by the Minneapolis Institute of Art for their permanent collection in 2017.  His drawing of the Minnesota poet, Robert Bly, was acquired by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 2025. His work has been collected by many private collectors, including: David Lévy & Associates (Brussels), James Faber (London), Elena Sparling, Rachel McGarry, Jennifer Phelps, Zeno Wicks, Teo Nguyen, Robert and Ruth Bly, Meg and Wayne Gisslen, Jaime and Kyle Gearhart, Nancy and Jim Fawcett, and others.

Bly Pope's hyperrealistic pencil drawings and oil paintings of landscapes, faces, flowers and natural phenomena are meant to facilitate the viewer’s close inspection through their abundance of discrete fragments of information and their insistence that even the ordinary is worthy of extreme scrutiny. These works embody his belief that the mundane is miraculous, the commonplace is extraordinary, and that every diminutive, “missable” object is alive, singular and sacred, and that everyday occurrences must be appreciated with care, reverence and gratitude.

Rowan Pope is a professional studio artist whose work explores the human condition by telling visual narratives. Many of his drawings and paintings are inspired by great stories from literature, particularly the dark and brilliant work of Franz Kafka. Rowan also draws and paints landscapes and botanicals, which celebrate the vast beauty and quiet peace of nature, and humanity’s humble place within it. The botanicals in this show are meant to inspire viewers to discover the “extraordinary within the ordinary,” to witness boundless and miraculous worlds “in a grain of sand,” as William Blake described, and to explore in wonder the profound and exquisite universes in even the smallest of things. Rowan has worked extensively with genocide and Holocaust survivors, and some of his art derives from the devastating real-life stories told by those survivors. He works in an imaginative style of hyperrealism in which he integrates photographs into digital collages and transforms those collages into meticulous drawings. 

Rowan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University and received his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Minnesota where he has been an Adjunct Professor for 12 years. He has also taught design and color theory classes for 10 years at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where he received a Faculty Development Grant to travel to Prague, Czech Republic, to research the life of Franz Kafka. In 2013 he created an illustrated book based on the stories of Holocaust survivor Joe Grosnacht, for which he received a Major Arts Grant from Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Council. His artwork has been shown in many national and international exhibitions and has won numerous awards. Many private collectors have acquired his work, and his public collections include The Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Walker Art Center.