Betty Cuningham Gallery Presents William Bailey, New Work

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by William Bailey, including recent still-life and figure paintings as well as a selection of works on paper. This will be the artist's third exhibition at the gallery; he will be present for the opening reception on Thursday, February 18th.

Bailey is known particularly for his still-life paintings, but what is not always understood is that he paints the still-lifes from memory. He has a collection of bowls, cups, candlesticks and finials around his studio and is therefore familiar with the objects, but Bailey composes the painting on the canvas from his imagination, adjusting the light source and relative scale of each object as he paints. Within the painting each object appears to have its own quiet personality: some stand alone, while others cluster in crowds.

Also included in this exhibition are three figure paintings. The figures, usually female, have an oddly weightless, dreamlike appearance. Like the objects in the still-lifes, the standing or seated nude is painted from memory and placed in an ambiguous setting outside the context of a specific time or place.

Unlike the paintings and the color studies, Bailey's figurative works on paper are completed from life. These pencil drawings, like the paintings, are very refined, every nuance is captured, but unlike the painting, there is a different sort of immediacy to the image.

Bailey is Professor of Art Emeritus at Yale University and served as Dean of the Art School from 1975 - 1976. He is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters as well as the National Academy of Design. Since 1970 he has served as a trustee for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and has served as a member of the board of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art since 2000. His work can be seen in a host of public and private collections, most notably the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

William Bailey was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, served as a sergeant in the United States Army, and received both his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from The School of Art, Yale University. He has been exhibiting in New York since the late 1960's. He lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut and Umbria, Italy.

An essay by Alexi Worth will accompany the exhibition.