Spirit of Place brings together renowned Miami Master Darby Bannard with three outstanding mid-career Miami artists who have long admired his example while evolving their own distinct, highly individual styles that reflect the nature of their environment. Darby Bannard’s paintings are inspired by the striking endless flat vistas of the Everglades and the lowering sun and flamboyant clouds of the evening sky. This inspiration is also manifested in small mixed-media landscapes named after Florida towns. John Bailly’s work combines gestural brushstrokes with images of humans figures, maps, and urban images, capturing the essence of a place while imaginatively juxtaposing fragments of depicted forms as if they are both emerging from and sinking into their surroundings. Jaqueline Gopie paints large canvases with quick, spontaneous strokes and swirls of bright, often transparent color that evoke moments of delight experienced by children playing in the beaches and surf of her native Jamaica. Kathleen Staples creates dramatic effects which are quirky, lively, startling and full of humor. Implied references to turbulent natural processes like flowing lava, wind-whipped ocean or desiccated earth are tamed by starkly simple geometric forms in eccentric colors, sometimes built out in relief with brightly colored gel or or gritty modeling paste.