Figure Painting Reinvented: Tod Bailey, JJ Baker, and Vincent Blair
Figure Painting Reinvented: Tod Bailey, JJ Baker, and Vincent Blair
Figure Painting Reinvented: Tod Bailey, JJ Baker, and Vincent Blair
Who could resist HOT! Or a glass of hooch on the loading deck?
Monterroso Gallery at Houston’s Spring Street Studios ropes in visiting curators to organize shows that bring fresh talent to the public. In this vein, you can’t do better than to rope in Patrick Palmer, Dean at The Glassell School of Art of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Faculty Chair of its Studio School and Department Head of Art History.
Palmer is presenting “Figure Painting Reinvented: Tod Bailey, JJ Baker, and Vincent Blair,” at Monterroso Gallery, Friday August 27 through September 2, 2021. The Gallery is at 1824 Spring Street, #104, 77007. Opening reception is Friday August 27, 6-9pm
Here’s what Palmer says to entice you: Since the day our ancestors started chronicling their activities on their cave walls, we storytellers have been fascinated with the act of recording ourselves. We humans have pretty much used every device we can get our hands on to document our lives, and the reflection of this slow evolution of recording our thoughts about the human form are pretty much a diary of how man has communicated for the past 44,000 years. With the technically advances made in the past 50 years we are leaning towards a more and more electronic based system of communication and portrayal of ourselves, but with the computer, we are putting the computers/cameras between the artist and the canvas.
Each generation intuitively represents the human form in a slightly different manner, often this act corresponding with the latest developments of that generation. In painting, the slight changes from decade to decade mirror all the socio-economic changes we experience: wars, depressions, periods of economic growth. All these upheavals effect the artist’s interpretation of themselves and of their society.
The three artists I have chosen to invite, Tod Bailey, J.J. Baker and Vincent Blair are not connected in any other way than that they are all young painters interested in the human form. I think they are amongst the best of this next generation; they are relaying their interpretations of our world today. Much like the abstract expressionist painters that were working between and immediately after the World Wars, these three men are giving us their views of the chaos that we are currently living in. Though each of them are completely different in their art, they are all taking us back to a richness that is possible in painting, possible because of the artist’s hands. Their painterly brushstrokes are charged, not only with thick impasto paint, but beautifully laid out and highly expressive brushstrokes, the likes that we saw in Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline, and many others work. I feel hopeful for painting when I see the work of these three men.
I applaud these three artists for embracing PAINTING!
– Patrich Palmer
HOT!
Spring Street Studios describes Friday night as “Hot night, cool jazz! A great summer night of art, live jazz music, food, and drinks! Meet new artists and shop an array of paintings, sculptures, photography, mixed media, jewelry, and more. Door prizes of art donated by participating artists. Featuring the jazz music of Ronnie Davis, Piano Gigs and More. View artwork on display throughout the building Regarding Space in the downstairs gallery, the Resident Art Collection on the 2nd floor, and Figure Painting Reinvented, curated by Patrick Palmer featuring local artists Vincent Blair, Todd Bailey, and JJ Baker along with guitarist, Dilas Santana at Monterosso Gallery in Studio #104.