Paintings, jazz featured at Sunday service at Unitarian Universalist church

A Sunday service at the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church will feature paintings and jazz.

The paintings by regional artist Rickey A. Beene will be displayed in the church sanctuary. They are portraits of his neighbors in Petros in Morgan County.

“The worship service will consist of Beene’s art interspersed with jazz pieces, played by several musicians invited by ORUUC Music Director Wendel Werner,” a press release said. “During this service, attendees will be invited to move among the music and art and to respond to it with art of your own. In this experimental service, there will be reflections on dissonance and dignity.”

The service is titled “Dissonance and Dignity: A Sunday with Paintings and Jazz.”

Beene is a native of Petros, a self-taught painter, and a teacher by training. He has dedicated the past 10 years of his life to painting, using primarily acrylics, the press release said.

“When I pick up my brushes, there is never any doubt in my mind about what I am going to paint,” Beene said. “I always look for ‘all the world’ in one face, and the faces I paint are those of the people of my hometown, Petros, Tenn. Every individual has about himself the universal, so I attempt to find all the experience of our human living in each face. I attempt to know something of their joys, something of their overwhelming losses, something of their victories, and something of their heartbreaking defeats.”

The Sunday service starts at 10 a.m. at Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church at 1500 Oak Ridge Turnpike.

Beene has had exhibitions at Carson-Newman College and at the Oak Ridge Art Center. For more information on him, visit http://poutinghouse.wordpress.com.