2008: Mysterious Clarity(s)
New versions of A Mysterious Clarity kept being requested in 2008 we showed at the Brevard Museum in Melbourne, FL but in May-July we had the biggest version yet at The Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo, FL . I thought it was the best version of the show so far, in large part because of the beautiful, large space that let the works breath and flow like they had never been able to before. Below are some images from that show but I have more on on webpage under "Gallery Views" 
Below is a small pdf of the brochure the Gulf Coast Museum of Art produced for the exhibition.2008MCgalleryguide2pdf
2008: "More Is More" in Italy
The More Is More: Maximalist tendencies in Contemporary Painting show that opened at the FSU Museum in 2007 had a wonderful 64 page catalog that included a curatorial essay by the curator, Tatiana Flores, and this catalog somehow made its way into the hands of an Italian gallery director named Masha at Byblos Art Gallery in Verona, Italy. She invited a 5 of the artists in the original show to exhibit a new version of that exhibition in her space."The group of artists in "More is More" that is on exhibit at Byblos Art Gallery in Verona, Italy (from May 9 to July 26, 2008) share in a "maximalist" dialog that allows them to mix and mash different styles and images in ways that create a nonlinear look and reading of their works.All these artists employ seemingly contradictory approaches to image making in order to convey a type of post-modern truth and vision in their works. They incorporate elements of the art of the past with those of the present, look to the West and East, try to overcome boundaries between high and low culture, between text and image and even try to reconcile representation with abstraction in a single work.The works of Lilian Garcia-Roig, James Barsness, Clayton Brothers, Mark Messersmith and Grant Miller, therefore, are characterized by a taste for excess in both image, reading and materials, the overhead of composition that emphasizes the exuberance of the narrative, passionate gestural strokes. Each of these maximalist paintings demands the utmost attention from the viewer, as they sweep us from surfaces to surface, each so full of images, paint and narratives, that we left speechless."-Italian Press
2008: Two Texas Solos Shows
Into the Woods was the title of a solo show of recent groupings of WA, FL, NH & TX on-site paintings that opened at the Grace Museum in Abilene, TX in July and then traveled to the Michelson Museum in Marshall, TX in September. You can see some images from that show from the Grace Museum on my webpage under "Gallery Views".
2008: Bridge Fair in Miami
Carol Jazzar showed my recent FL paintings at Bridge fair during Miami Beach Art Basel fair week.
2008: New American Paintings #76
My works were selected again for inclusion in New American Paintings! Peter Boswell, the senior curator at the Miami Art Museum, was the juror NAP #76 (souther region) in June/July 2008. He specifically commented "on how I use the tactility of the paint medium to create tension between the materiality of my means and the three-demensionality of my imagery". My works are found on pages 76-79.Volume 13, Issue 3, ISSN 1066-2235
2007: Cumulative Nature
In 2007 I became represented by Carol Jazzar Gallery in Miami. She wanted me to create a new installation of 48" x 36" FL paintings for a my solo show with her in December. The result was Cumulative Nature: North Florida, my first true “passing of the day” one-day, all-day paintings.The show was reviewed in numerous publications during the Miami Beach Art Basel Fair week and below is a pdf of a review in Art Nexus magazine.CNArtNexusRev2007
2007: Painted Woods
This was my fifth solo show at Valley House Gallery in Dallas and they produced a catalog for the show that included a curatorial essay by Tatiana Flores. The exhibition titled Painted Woods, included many of the works from WA that were in the Thick Brush Painting Installation show I had a few months prior at the MAC in Dallas. There were also works from my recent residency at the MacDowell Colony in NH & new paintings from my northern FL "backyard".
Below is a VERY LARGE (43MB) pdf of the entire 2007 Painted Woods catalog produced by Valley House Gallery. Downloading will take a while.2007VHCatalogueFull
2007: "More is More: Maximalist Painting"
I worked with art historian Tatiana Flores to help curate a show at the FSU Museum of Fine arts called "More is More: Maximalist Tendencies in Contemporary American Painting". Professor Flores wrote a curatorial essay titled The "Ism" in Maximalism for the beautiful catalog that the museum published for the show. At the time, the word "maximalist" was a made-up adjective we were using to describe paintings that seemed perceptually and conceptually muti-demensional and intense.We enjoyed seeing the word "maximalist" and "Maximalism" starting to be used about a year later by the New York Times and New Yorker writers but must admit, I wish they could have seen this show because if they had, I know they would have wanted to write about how great it was. One of the artist who came to the opening, Jin Meyerson, mentioned he thought this was by far the best painting show he had seen all year...and he lives in NYC!You can see images of the show by going to my website and searching under Gallery Views.The artists in the show were JAMES BARSNESS, DOUGLAS BOURGEOIS, ROB CLAYTON & the Clayton Brothers, MICHAEL ROQUE COLLINS, ROSSON CROW, REED DANZIGER, DANIEL DOVE, LILIAN GARCIA-ROIG, JULIE HEFFERNAN, MARK MESSERSMITH, JIN MEYERSON, GRANT MILLER, LOREN MUNK, ERIK PARKER, EMILIO PEREZ, LISA SANDITZ, DAN SUTHERLAND, GAEL STACK, MASAMI TERAOKA, NICOLA VERLATO, and ROBERT WILLIAMS...with a special appearnace of a 1966 Peter Saul painting...WOW!
Below is my brief co-curatorial statement on this concept behind this show titled "How to Do More with More: Embracing Maximalism in Contemporary Painting". You can click on it to enlarge it so you can actually read it.
Full "More is More..." catalog pdf (3.6 MB) 2007MaxCatalogue
2007: Red Clay Survey
Fall Paths (NH), my 60" X 144" triptych (painted during my 2006 MacDowell residency) was awarded First Place at the Huntsville Museum of Art’s biennial Red Clay Survey: 2007 Exhibit of Contemporary Southern Art" by the juror, Margaret Lazzari. It also won the People’s Choice Award (from the general audience votes) and this was the first time in the show’s long history that both awards had been given to the same work.
2006: Joan Mitchell Painting Award
In November of 2006 I got some exciting and amazing news when I found out I had been awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. The Painters and Sculptors Grant Program was established to acknowledge painters and sculptors creating work of exceptional quality through unrestricted career support. This is a highly competitive and prestigious, once in a life-time national award that comes with a $25,000 prize.http://joanmitchellfoundation.org/artist-programs/artist-grants/painter-sculptorsThis is the largest painting only-specific arts award in the nation and to be selected, one must first be nominated by one of the 80 secret nominators (who can only recommends one painter and one sculptor annually for the award). Both the secret nominators and jury panel consist of prominent curators, artists and art educators from across the country. Out of the 160 artists nominated from the entire pool of artist working in the country, only up to 25 are selected for the award. This is truly a significant award to receive and I am very honored to have gotten it.Joan Mitchell awardees include art-world luminaries such as: Frances Barth, Glenn Ligon, Mel Chin, Fred Tomaselli, Shahzia Sikander, Allison Saar, Janie Antoni, Amy Sillman, Polly Apfelbaum, Do-Ho Suk, Shinique Smith, Tim Hawkinson, Kara Walker, Mark Bradford, Julie Mehretu, Wangenchi Mutu, Nick Cave, Sue Williams, Mickalene Thomas, and Peter Saul to name a few…Excellent company for sure.
JOAN MITCHELL FOUNDATION (2006 Painter's Award Winner) artist page link:http://joanmitchellfoundation.org/artist-programs/artist-grants/painter-sculptors/2006/lillian-garcia-roig
2006: MacDowell Colony Residency
Founded in 1896 by the composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, the pianist Marian MacDowell, the MacDowell Colony is one of the oldest and most distinguished and prestigious artists residency programs in the nation. It is nested in 450 acres of wooded lands on the outskirts of Peterborough New Hampshire. The mission of The MacDowell Colony is to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which they can produce enduring works of the imagination. The sole criterion for acceptance to The MacDowell Colony is artistic excellence. Fellows in the fields of Architecture, Composition, Film, Interdisciplinary Artists, Theatre Artists, Visual Artists and Writers are chosen by a selection committee comprised of leaders in their respective fields from a very large pool of international applications.I had been wanting to return to the North East during the fall season since my visit to Vermont in September of 1996 when I was a Visiting Artist Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center so I was thrilled to be able to get a fall residency at MacDowell from Mid-Sept to Mid-Oct. The grounds of the colony are covered with maple, birch, and beech trees and they were in full glory during my visit. The display of high intensity yellows, oranges, reds and the full range of greens allowed me to explore and use pigments and colors in my on-site works like never before. I had stocked up on my cadmiums before I went but had to buy more while I was there!My time there was beyond great and I was able to create 20 mostly mid-sized works that were true intense perceptual experiences. I was humbled and honored to find out that I was selected as a Milton and Sally Avery Fellow. This is an annual honor given to two MacDowell residents of “outstanding ability in the area of painting”.http://www.macdowellcolony.org
2006: Thick Brush Painting Installation
This was my first large-scale painting installation and it consisted of 19 independently created on-site paintings arranged in a non-contiguous way, closely to one another so that formal relationships from one painting flowed into the next. I like to show my individually conceived paintings as large installations of closely hung, formally connected works that create a sense of compelling overwhelmingness in the viewer....an experience that more closely parallels that of actually being in the woods; constantly focusing in and out of space over time. The dense grouping caused the viewer to not be able to see each work as an individual painting (or image/view) thus purposely undermining some of the representational solidity of the works and bringing their formal qualities (the abstract nature of painting with the materiality of the paint and the painting process) to the forefront of this perceptual experience.
All of the paintings in this show were created over my three summers of working on-site in the foothills Cascades Mountains of Washington State. Below is a pdf of a full artist's statement about the works in this show.2006MACartistSt
2006: More Mysterious Clarity(s)
Two new versions of A Mysterious Clarity were exhibited in 2006. One was Gaddis Geeslin Gallery at San Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas and the other was at the Wynwood Art Complex during the Miami Beach Art Basel week.
2005: Florida Focus-Northern Tropics
Florida Focus: Northern Tropics was the forth installment at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Clearwater of this exhibition series which was designed to survey some of the most exciting work currently produced in various parts of Florida. Rena Blades, who was then CEO of the Palm Beach County Cultural Commission and previously had been Director of the Brogan Museum in Tallahassee, curated this version with the support of Ken Rollins, the Executive Director of the museum.The 11 other artists included in this exhibition were: George Blakely, Linda Hall, Alexa Kleinbard, Cate Wyatt Magalian, Mark Messersmith, Donna O'Neal, Kris Rybka, O.L. Samuels, Duncan Stewart, Paul Tamanian, and Jim Roche.
2005: New American Paintings #58
I was included in New American Paintings #58 (Southern Zone) which was juried by Beth Venn, an independent curator from New York. My works appeared on pages 58-61 and below is the artist statement I included in that edition.
2005: Cintas Foundation Visual Arts and Film Finalist Exhibition in NYC
Since 1963, the CINTAS Foundation, Inc. has awarded fellowships annually to creative artists of Cuban lineage residing outside of Cuba. The biennial competition and exhibition was held this year at the Americas Society Gallery in NYC was titled CINTAS: Foundation Visual Arts and Film Awards. It showcased the works of Christian Curiel and Amalia Zarranz (who received the fellowship from the Cintas Foundation for their works in visual arts and film, respectively) and award finalists Felipe Dulzaides, Lilian Garcia-Roig, and Neraldo de la Paz (Guerra de la Paz) for visual arts and Orlando Rojas for filmmaking.Three of my recent on-site painting groupings of the dense green Washington woods paintings were chosen for exhibition.The jury was comprised of Gabriela Rangel of Americas Society, Julian Zugazagoitia of El Museo del Barrio, Sandra Antelo Suárez of TRANS Magazine, and David Kiehl of the Whitney Museum.
2005: Mysterious Clarity(s)
New and different versions of the original A Mysterious Clarity exhibition went to the Alexander Brest Museum in Jacksonville University, the Art Center Galleries at Okalaoosa-Walton College in Niceville, FL and the Art Galleries at Valdosta State University in GA. Several large WA 60" x 144" on-site paintings were included in the shows.
2004: National Museum of Women in the Arts Exhibition
2004 was an important year for me as far as creating and exhibiting larger-scale Florida-based works and being acknowledged as a significant Florida artist. An example and highlight of this was being included in the exhibition Transitory Patters: Florida Women Artists that opened at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. in 2004 and then traveled to several museums across the state of Florida including the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art. Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz was the guest curator for the exhibition and she also contributed an essay for the catalog titled: Calm and Cacophony.Jurors/curators for the exhibition were Bonnie Clearwater, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; Lori Mertes, curator at the Miami Art Museum; Margaret Miller, director of the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum; Rena Minar, former director of the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science; and Sue Scott, adjunct curator at the Orlando Museum of Art.Out of the over 700 submissions, the 19 artists selected to be included in the exhibition were: Teresita Fernández, Naomi Fisher, Victoria Gitman, Mernet Larson, Lynne Golob Gelfman, Francie Bishop Good, Carol Brown, Natalia Benedetti, Julie Davidow, Maria Martinez-Cañas, Beatriz Monteavaro, Dara Friedman, Suzanne McClelland, Aida Ruilova, Jennifer Morgan, Vickie Pierre, Marisa Tellería-Díez, and Wendy Wischer.Below is a link to the press release about the exhibitionTransitoryPatternsFloridaWomenArtists at NMWA
This catalog can be purchased from Amazon.com
2004: "A Mysterious Clarity"
A Mysterious Clarity is the title to a show that featured three FSU painters (Ray Burggraf, Mark Messersmith & me) who all use landscape as their point of departure for their distinct, yet strangely strongly related works. This show opened at 621 Gallery in Tallahassee in 2004 and was so popular and successful that it traveled to numerous other museums and galley venues in FL, GA & TX. This year 621 invited us back to have an updated decade show...what are we doing now...called A Mysterious Clarity 2.0.
2004: "Sight on Site"
In November of 2004 I had my fourth solo show at Valley House Gallery in Dallas, TX. This exhibit titled Sight on Site featured some of my first works from the foothills of the Cascades Mountains in western Washington, northeast of Seattle. Although I had been to Seattle several times before for short family visits, I did not realize that I could actually try to spend extended time there until the summer 2003. That year my in-laws purchased a very small cabin in the woods and when they took us up to see it, I thought that it was visually compelling that I instantly felt a deep desire, or rather NEED, to paint there even though I had no supplies or strategy to get the works back if I did manage to paint. Luckily my family is sympathetic to my artistic temperament so I was able to basically abandoned my them for the rest of the visit. I immediately drove into the city and went to Daniel Smith Art Supply store where I purchased eight 24" x 18" canvases, brushes, paints, etc. and then drove back up to the cabin where I painted non-stop until the day before our flight back to Tallahassee.That brief but wonderful time in the Cascades Mountains left me determined to figure out how I could manage to spend the entire summer painting there. Luckily I was awarded a 2004 (COFRS) summer research grant from FSU which provided the means for me to do just that. The works I created over that summer proved to be the foundation for an ever growing series of larger Washington works: works that ultimately lead to several large-scale painting installations and shows.
