Spirit of Place
Miami Master Darby Bannard with John Bailly, Jacqueline Gopie, and Kathleen Staples

MIAMI – We are pleased to premier the exhibition Spirit of Place during Art Basel 2014. The collection brings together renowned Darby Bannard and 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.

When Darby Bannard moved to Florida 25 years ago he was struck by the endless flat vistas of the Everglades and the lowering sun and flamboyant clouds of the evening sky. These impressions were incorporated into his paintings of the time and also manifested in
small mixed-media landscapes named after Florida towns. Many of these landscape and atmospheric influences persist to this day.

In his semi-abstract paintings and mixed-media works, John Bailly combines gestural brushstrokes with images of human 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.

Jacqueline 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. The pictures take you there with a powerful immediacy that belies their free-wheeling informality.

A pioneer in the innovative use of the new acrylic mediums, 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 gritty modeling paste.

 

Art Basel Hours
Tuesday – Friday 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Noon to 5:00 p.m.