Brian Jones, professor of fine arts, displayed a retrospective look back on his artwork spanning from 1979 to 2014 in the Ronald L. Barr Gallery from Oct. to the end of Nov.

Jones said the pieces that were displayed in the Barr Gallery represent larger groups of works from many different times in his life.

“If I look at a painting that’s in the exhibit, that painting came out of a larger body of paintings there were dealing with the same issues at the time,” Jones said.

He said examples of some of his larger works are in the exhibit and they have images or representations of spines. He said they have to do with a time in his life when he had surgery on his back.

Jones said the canvas with the toy soldiers on top of it was a part of a series he called fossils. He said he used these toy soldiers to represent looking at societies woes such as war.

“The idea of taking war and making it as fossil, someone will look and see that fossil and wonder ‘what was that?’” Jones said.

Jones has been a professor IU Southeast for the past 35 years, and he said many of the pieces that were displayed in the Barr Gallery were created during the times IU Southeast granted him five sabbaticals to take time to do research and create work.

“One of the things about teaching at a university that allows you to continue to pursue your research interests has been an amazing blessing,” Jones said.

Jones said he will be retiring at the end of the spring semester 2015, and he was honored that Brian Harper, assistant professor of fine arts and co-coordinator for the Barr Gallery, and Debra Clem, professor of fine arts and coordinator of the Barr Gallery asked him to have a retrospective exhibition.