LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ -- Dr. Harry Naar, professor of fine arts at Rider University and an accomplished artist, will show his paintings in an exhibition hosted by Les Malamut Art Gallery in Union, NJ, beginning next month.

The exhibition, titled "Paintings and Drawings," will highlight Dr. Naar's still-lifes in acrylic with mysteriously animated hats, shells, and fruit, some set against a window view to the outdoors, as well as landscape drawings and watercolors inspired directly from trips to Costa Rica, Italy, and New Jersey.

The show will open on Saturday, April 24 and continue through Wednesday, June 2. An opening reception for Dr. Naar will be held in the gallery on Saturday, April 24, from 2 to 4 p.m. Regular gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Dr. Naar, a resident of Lawrenceville, NJ and director of the Rider University Art Gallery, has taught at Rider since 1980. He is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art with an M.F.A. from Indiana University, and has studied with the French painter Jean Hélion in Paris.

His work has been shown nationally and internationally in forums such as the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, and the USSR Artist Union Gallery in Moscow. His work is included in corporate, private, and museum collections such as the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, the New Jersey State Museum, the Morris Museum of Arts and Sciences, Johnson & Johnson, and Bristol Myers-Squibb. He has curated a wide-range of one-person and group exhibitions, and is listed in the publication Who's Who in American Art.

Paintings by Dr. Naar are currently featured at the Bristol Myers-Squibb Gallery in an exhibition of artistic responses to Robert Fagles new translation of Homer's Odyssey. That show will run through Sunday, April 4.

He is also one of 21 artists presenting their individual creative visions of New Jersey in a group exhibition of paintings curated by Lois Dodd in the Rider University Art Gallery. The Rider exhibition will continue through Saturday, April 17.

Les Malamut Art Gallery is housed within the Union Public Library, located in Friberger Park on Morris Avenue in Union. For more information on the exhibit, contact the gallery at (908) 851-5450.