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July 6, 2008                                                                                    Gwen Parish

Parish Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition entitled “Herbert Gentry and Friends”.  This exhibition will open with a reception from 6:00–8:00 PM on Friday, July 18th and will run through August 30, 2008. 

Herbert Gentry (1919-2003) arrived in Paris, France (courtesy of the GI Bill) in 1946 to study art; he remained because the climate provided him with the freedom to find himself as an artist in the world.  Paris gave American artists of African descent who ventured to Paris in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s such as Ed Clark, Bill Hutson, Larry Potter, Lois Mailou Jones, and Beauford Delaney – a place to just “be.”  As Gentry stated “I paint what I experience, who I am, in the Black world, especially in America, there’s a thing that you can’t forget where you came from, you paint from your experiences and who you are.”

Gentry’s friendships illuminate his movement through the world; they were part of his rich experiences in Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm and New York.  His artist friends share his openness to other ways, which their thematic explorations reflect.  Travel, migration and mobility are sheer inspiration.  Ed Clark, records in his broad stokes the relation between place and expression, Vincent Smith’s narrative prints of his travels south of the Sahara document a deeper search,  Rachelle Puryear evokes in her representations of nature a texture of timeless endurance, while for Richard Mayhew’s landscape is a spiritual world and Romare Bearden mines the terrain of history and memory.

This exhibition “Herbert Gentry and Friends” includes artists: Hamed Abdalla, Skunder Boghossian, Romare Bearden, Nanette Carter, Ed Clark, Beauford Delaney, Robin Holder, Bill Hutson, Lois Mailou Jones, Wifredo Lam, Richard Mayhew, Sam Middleton, Toni Parks, Vicente Pimentel, Larry Potter, Rachelle Puryear, Mary Anne Rose, Merton Simpson, Vincent D. Smith, and Walter Williams.