Florida Artists Group

Gregory's Artist's Satement and Bio:

            The artist was born in Martinsville, VA, 1946, received his undergraduate degrees from Polk Community College, Winter Haven, FL, 1966, and the University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 1968.

            To reach inside and free the creative child within each of us is basically what my art is about. I might begin with a used air conditioner filter as in “Dust to Dust” or a bright red cloth tie as in “Man Under Paints With Red Tie”, but from that point I seldom know what direction the work will take. I simply “follow paths through the woods” as I did as a child growing up near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I played in the mud a lot, then grew up and played in the muddy paint a lot. When I played I learned that some good things sometimes happened. Then I learned that I could get the good things that happened to grow like a plant until the whole canvas would sometimes be a good thing.
            It is probably from dust that we come and to dust that we go, but in between there is growth. When all is said and done, how much we have grown determines the richness of the soil we leave on which others will trod. From the muddy mess I often make in art and life is born the lesson of humility and discovery.
            The idealism of my youth and the realism of adult life run head-on in my work to form an expression that merges seriousness with playfulness and superficiality with depth. Somewhere inside that depth is an innocent child, a very good person who can touch nature, and when I visit with him (or her) I learn to love, to fly, to live. To this day it is that sincere, sensitive child seeing and feeling nature that my art echoes and that moves my spirit to create my mixed media “layered” paintings. I only wish there were more days when he could come out to play.

Winner of more than 100 Best of Show Awards, Greg has accumulated a list of more than one thousand awards in art competitions around Florida from such prominent jurors as Robert Hughes, art critic for Time magazine; Elaine de Kooning, artist and critic; Barbara Rose, author of American Art Since 1900; and directors and curators of such prestigious institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.C., Guggenheim Museum, N.Y.C. and The National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian, Washington D.C.  At the Rosenquist Invitational Exhibition in Tampa, FL, well-known artist James Rosenquist picked Greg’s work as his favorite in the show. Also, Greg was the only Florida artist accepted in the 159th Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design in New York City. 

Judging

The artist has judged more than 40 exhibits and festivals including the Vero Beach Art Festival,
the Cape Coral Riverview Art Festival, the Lake Mary/Heathrow Festival, the Osceola Art Festival, and the Mandarin Art Festival in Jacksonville, FL.