Radcliffe Bailey, born in 1968, belongs to the next generation of Southern artists. Yet, like many working today, he readily acknowledges John Scott’s influence and encouragement. Like Scott, Bailey’s work draws inspiration from music.
Radcliffe Bailey’s exhibition “The Magic City” opened and closed at Blaffer Gallery on the same evening in June 2001, a victim of flooding brought about by Tropical Storm Allison. As torrents of rain closed roads and highways, causing bayous throughout the city to overflow, Bailey—unfamiliar with Houston—became stranded, and spent the night in his car before retuning to safety. All of Bailey’s paintings and installations are an intricate blend of personal experiences and historical references, and for “Tides” he has created a cycle of highly expressionistic visual tableaux that survey watery metaphors from a variety of perspectives.
Radcliffe Bailey creates lavish, painterly homages to black American experience in the form of socially inflected, somewhat elegiac sculptural wall assemblages. The pieces, which are made of mixed mediums on wood and are often shaped, function as platforms for Bailey’s ruminations on culture and history.