JOHN ALEXANDER
Exhibition Dates: May 2 – July 18, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 2nd, 6 – 8 pm
Location: Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Gallery Hours: Monday - Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm
Contact Info: 504.522.1999. www.arthurrogergallery.com
Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by John Alexander. The exhibition will be on view May 2nd – July 18th, 2009 at the Arthur Roger Gallery, located at 432 Julia Street. The artist will be present at the opening reception hosted by the gallery on Saturday, May 2nd from 6 to 8 pm.
John Alexander's work pays tribute to the rich tradition of American painters inspired by nature and its visual complexities. The artist's reverence for the infinitely rich natural world is often coupled with sorrow over its degradation. This exhibition of recent work includes several large scale paintings that capture a wealth of small details in nature and also mysteriously beautiful oil paintings on paper of meticulously realized flora and fauna.
Alexander is a painter whose ambitions have always been heroic and all encompassing. He believes deeply in the power of painting to communicate his passions. In Alexander's own words, he wants his art "to be highly personal and very much about what my experiences in the world have been, not in an illustrative way, but in a real emotional way that is universal."
Born in Beaumont in 1945, John Alexander grew up in east Texas, the birthplace of big oil. He retains vivid memories of expeditions with his father in which he discovered the exotic wildlife of the swampy marshlands of the bayou and the Gulf Coast.
After completing an MFA in 1970 at Southern Methodist University, Alexander moved to Houston and became a member of the art faculty of the University of Houston. In the late 70s, Alexander left Texas for New York, first SoHo and later Amagansett on the south shore of Long Island. The artist settled there in an 18th century farmhouse on three acres of land by the coast. Although he has lived in New York for more than 20 years, he remains a "Texas artist" for many.
In late 2007, Alexander had a major retrospective of his work first shown at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. and then in spring 2008 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, the Dallas Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
For additional information contact the gallery at 504.522.1999 or visit our Web site www.arthurrogergallery.com.
