Throughout his career Darby Bannard has made significant original contributions to the field of art. Starting in Princeton University with his friend, Frank Stella he was an initiator of the Minimalist movement and part of the later New York School. In 1970 he began to use the new acrylic medium, which evolved into his ground-breaking paintings of colorful expanses of richly colored gels applied – due to a fortuitous lack of brushes – with squeegees, rakes and brooms. Today Bannard is Professor and Head of Painting at University of Miami and, always the innovator, is working with a group of painters creating the Miami School of Abstraction.

Bannard usually works very large and in series that may last years. In between he creates small works that allow him to innovate – to be free – to enjoy. With photographs of his new home-state – his own and others, as reference, Bannard uses primarily oil sticks to capture the vibrant colors of the Florida landscape and to that adds what he has at hand – chalk, spray paint, minerals spirits producing work that encapsulates the splendor and expansiveness of the Florida Sky, which seems the main subject in these works. For those who have experienced the indescribable Florida sunrises and sunsets, Bannard has captured as it can only be done – in paint - the delicate pinks of sunrise, the intense Day-glo orange of sunset, the ensuing storm and the illusive Green Flash. As Bannard often says in his artist statements, “I hope you enjoy the pictures.”

For over 45 years people across the world have enjoyed his pictures starting with his first solo exhibit in NYC in 1965 (he now has close to 100). In 1987 Clement Greenberg proclaimed him one of the best five or six living painters. For his work Bannard has received six national awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Bannard’s work is in the collections of all the major New York and US museums and several overseas. He is a prolific writer on art with over 100 published essays and reviews in ArtNews, Art Forum, Art in America and the NY Times. He curated and wrote the catalog for the first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of the paintings of Han Hofmann at the Hirshhorn Museum. Bannard is represented in NYC by Loretta Howard Gallery. We are honored to have him here at Watson MacRae Gallery.

SELECTED EXHIBITS
Florida Abstracted (2011)
Paintings and Prints by Contemporary Notables (2013)

ARTIST WEBSITE: wdbannard.com

Greg Biolchini, who moved from Chicago to Bonita Springs as a boy, spent 35 years developing a national reputation as a teacher, juror and master pastelist. Three years ago, Biolchini turned his considerable talents to painting his life-long love – Florida skies.

Working in oil, Biolchini’s Summer Sky Series does justice to Nature. The paintings have an authenticity to them without being illustrative or sentimental. They are quietly powerful and are overwhelming in their beauty. They are a snapshot of summer’s paradise.

Biolchini has had 30 solo exhibits throughout the country since 1975 and received 15 significant awards including Master Pastelist Status by the Pastel Society of America. In addition he has written and had published three books and DVD’s on his teaching methods. Biolchini’s work is in numerous public collections including three museums. He has his studio in Fort Myers.

“I’ve been thinking about these skies for the past 20 years and I want to paint them for the next 20.” -- Greg Biolchini

NICOLAS CARONE (1918 – 2010)

Nicolas Carone received the Prix de Rome at the age of 25 and in 2009 at 91, received the Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. In the interim years Carone studied with Hans Hoffman; apprenticed with Leon Kroll; taught at Columbia, Yale, Cooper Union and New York Studio School; exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Brussels World’s Fair; and, lived at the Springs with fellow painters and friends Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollack and the de Koonings. Of local note Fort Myer’s native, Hollis Jeffcoat studied with Carone at New York Studio School and as the first Director of the famous Stable Gallery, Carone gave Bob Rauschenberg his first New York show. 

Carone has long been an important and influential artist in the New York art scene. In the 40’s and 50’s Carone, working closely with Hans Hoffman, Matta and Jackson Pollock was at the center of the New York School of artists who changed the way we think about art. As a founding faulty member at the New York Studio School and teacher for 20 years, his exuberance and passion for art-making influenced and inspired several generations of artists. And the re-discovery of Carone in the last five years gives new audiences an opportunity to be stirred and impressed by his masterful paintings.

Carone started studying and painting at eleven and at 92 still had the fire to paint. The Landscapes in this exhibit were painted in 2000. While Carone was a second generation Abstract Expressionist, his academic training and three years studying in Italy during his formative years greatly influenced his work. The paintings in this exhibit are an extraordinary combination of modern and old master and epitomize Carone’s life-long fascination with the use of metaphor and imagined imagery in art making. 

Carone’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, National Academy of Art and the High Museum and in numerous private collections. Carone is represented by the Joan Washburn and Lohin Geduld Galleries in New York City. The artist passed away in July 2010, but leaves behind a legion of students who carry on his legacy of making meaningful art.

CATHY HEGMAN

There is a richness found in Southern storytelling like nowhere else in the U.S. and Mississippi produced some of the greats. Why Mississippi? What is it about the culture, the society, the land that creates this special and unique ability to capture the human experience so beautifully? 

Whatever that is, it seems to run through other artists as well. Cathy Hegman is from this land, the Mississippi Delta, and her work are stories in paint. 

"I form a bond to the figure in my work," Cathy says, "as they tell a narrative of something that is from my life, that I feel will resonate with others." 

It's what Cathy's work is about - telling a story, but not the whole story, just moments in time that are "...respites of peace and quiet, even in the most turbulent times." 

The painting, "Emergence Entrapments of Beauty" (2012) gives us an example of Cahty's earlier work. Comparing this painting to the others in the exhibit, we can see how she has progressed to more abstracted, looser work. The figures have changed somewhat, but it is in the landscape where the visual difference is most striking. In both "Weight of Balance: Tympanic Totems" and "Bridged" the landscape drips with paint, as the figures' dresses melt into it and the background comes fully forward forming a wall on the same plane as the figures - a complete unity of human and land. It is interesting to note that in both paintings the creatures - dogs and birds - stand full and firm. 

Cathy's recent paintings would be termed "atmospheric," in art speak - what they are is moody, mysterious, ripe with feeling, deeply beautiful - they are from The Delta. 

Cathy has a degree in Interior Design from Mississippi State University and has been a working artist for 29 years. She has shown her work extensively in national and international art exhibitions and has been the recipient of art awards in the United States and Brazil. 

In addition, she has written features and articles for many of the national art magazines. Cathy is represented by several galleries including Tew Gallery, Atlanta; Fischer Gallery, Jackson, Ms; and Carol Robinson Gallery, New Orleans. 

She lives in Holly Bluff, Mississippi with her husband, Frank. 

"It is my hope to resonate peace in my art. In the midst of bedlam there is peace, and so it goes with art..." Cathy Hegman

HOLLIS JEFFCOAT

Fort Myers native, Hollis Jeffcoat has been a professional artist, since she moved to France after art school in 1976.  That means continuously painting and continually exhibiting work for 37 years. As Jeffcoat says “… it hasn’t always been easy … but I would not have it any other way.”

Initially a student at Kansas City Art Institute, Jeffcoat’s innate talent and abstract sensibility was honed at the New York Studio School where she studied with some of the great painter/teachers of our time – Philip Guston, Andrew Forge, Meyer Shapiro, Jack Tworkov and George McNeil - and then apprenticed with Joan Mitchell in France for three years. Jeffcoat has lived, worked and taught in France, Canada, New York City and Southwest Florida.  

Jeffcoat’s recent paintings are inspired by the waters that surround her beloved Sanibel Island where she spent her childhood and now lives. Look closely at these paintings and see the nuance and layers of color, the direction and size of the brush stroke, the edges and you will learn about Jeffcoat’s incredible technique; step back to see the movement and beautiful effects of her imagery and feel the energy of the work. Darby Bannard, art critic, professor and painter, who curated a solo exhibit of her paintings in Miami, says, “It is a pleasure to see work like this in these barren Postmodernist times. Enjoy it. It is the real thing.” 

Jeffcoat has had 20 solo exhibits and been in 35 group exhibitions in the US, Canada and France. Her work is in several New York and Canadian museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, The Morgan Library, The Contemporary Museums of Art in Montreal and Quebec City and in the Pierre Matisse Collection.

DAN WELDEN

There is praise and respect for one who, rather than looking for fame and glory, perfects their craft, shares their knowledge and innovates for the greater good. Dan Welden is such a person. For 40 years Welden has been making prints and works on paper. He is a painter, teacher, author and Master Printmaker, collaborating with artists who include: Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Jimmy Ernst, Dan Flavin, Esteban Vicente, Kurt Vonnegut, Alfonso Ossorio, Jane Freilicher, David Salle, Eric Fischl, among others. Recently, fame has caught up with him and this year alone he has been invited to participate in 12 events – artist residency in China, teaching in Mexico and at Haystack School in Maine, juror in St. Louis and several solo and group exhibits. 

Many of the pieces in the exhibit are originals. Starting with his callographic print, Welden adds graphite and paint to create a unique work of art that he calls a Hybrid Print. Others are limited editions of small runs. It is not only his technical expertise that makes Welden’s work stellar, however; it is his imagery. Welden’s works are lyrical abstractions that flow across the paper with a lightness and a sense of space that we can get lost in. Several pieces seem like enlarged sections of a map with its varying terrains, but of where. Welden’s color, line and texture combine to evoke a sense of the familiar rather than location, of feelings of space rather than place. In this work we can venture with Welden into the unexplored topography of his imagination.

Welden’s work has been shown in over 65 international solo exhibitions in museums and galleries and over 500 group exhibitions in the U.S., Europe, China, Australia, New Zealand and Peru. His work is in many public and private collections throughout the country including the Amity Art Foundation, Darien, Connecticut; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Portland Museum of Art, Oregon; and Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Welden is the originator of a non-toxic printmaking technique called the Solarplate method and the Director of Hampton Editions, Ltd. in Sag Harbor, Long Island.

MELISA CADELL

Melisa Cadell apprenticed in her father’s bronze foundry in Texas when she was young. We can assume she learned a lot under his tutelage, but it is her intensity and sensitivity to her subjects that grabs us and holds us captive. This too was learned at an early age when she did mission work “I was so young that this experience really stuck with me. So many of the women had to work so hard each day just to survive,” she says.

What adds significantly to the interest and intensity of the work are her surfaces and finishes, which are very involved. Cadell pours empathy, love and talent into the ceramic sculptures she creates and presents us with much to think about and feel.

Cadell says of her work: “Things come to me in story first. The images and stories blend together and I don’t censor them. Once I get the head on, that sets the tone. A face can pretty well tell a story and the expressions always come quickly to me. Adding all of the other layers is a process and that brings the meaning into completeness.”

Cadell received her BFA in Art Education and in Drawing and Painting at the University of North Texas. She teaches at Appalachian State University and East Tennessee State University. Cadell currently lives and works in Bakersville, North Carolina with her husband and two young children.