Greg Thompson Fine Art presents Carroll Cloar: A Road Less Traveled
North Little Rock, AR – On Friday, February 21 from 5-8 pm, Greg Thompson Fine Art will open its latest exhibition entitled Carroll Cloar: A Road Less Traveled in conjunction with 3rd Friday Night Art Walk in the Argenta Arts District of North Little Rock.
The show will run through April 12, 2014 and will run concurrently with the travelling exhibition The Crossroads of Memory: Carroll Cloar and the American South at the Arkansas Arts Center.
On Saturday, March 15 at 1:00 p.m. Greg Thompson, Executive Director, will present a lecture on Carroll Cloar. Cost for the Art Lecture Series is $10 and reservations are recommended.
Like most important artists from the 1950's, Cloar made a sojourn to New York (then the center of the art world) and attended the Art Students League, but unlike most artists who went to NYC and stayed, Cloar wanted to come back to the land he knew and loved and painted it for the rest of his career. “He was rare in that unlike a lot of other artists from the South, he returned home (Earl, Arkansas & Memphis, Tennessee) and made a name for himself on a national scale. Thus the name of the exhibition: A Road Less Traveled,” says Thompson. Prominent collectors of the artist’s work include: The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden/The Smithsonian, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan, The Whitney Museum of American Art, John D. and Abby Rockefeller, the Brooks Memphis Museum of Art and the Arkansas Arts Center. Wrote the artist in his book, Hostile Butterflies on his return to the South: “[In my paintings] You will see people who might have stepped out of my mother's album: early American faces, timeless dress and timeless customs. But they are changing too. They are the last of the Old America that isn't long for this earth."
The exhibition will include 23 original paintings and drawings from the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s spanning the breadth of his artistic carrier. Many works will be available for purchase others are on loan from prominent private collections. Says Thompson, “It will be museum show with price tags.”
Greg Thompson Fine Art, established in 1995 as a private art consulting and art dealership, opened its public gallery space in June 2009. It is located at 429 Main Street in the historic Argenta area of North Little Rock that is quickly becoming the ‘arts district’ for Central Arkansas. The gallery is on the second floor of a renovated historic building built in 1895 known as the Faucette Building and has over 3,000 square feet of public and private viewing space. Thompson spent several months designing his new space to look, feel and operate with the integrity and quality of similar galleries in New York, Chicago and Paris. It boasts 18-foot ceilings, original hard wood floors, and clean white walls. “There is nothing like it in the state of Arkansas. It is quickly becoming a destination gallery for the South.” Thompson says. The gallery’s focus is on important Southern Regional artists, established artists and important Modern masters from the 19th and 20th Century.
Greg Thompson Fine Art has consistently received awards for the Best Gallery in Arkansas from the readers of AY Magazine and Soiree magazine along with being featured prominently in the New York Times Travel section which says "At this gallery you'll find a terrific collection of Southern regionalists work."
For more information about Greg Thompson Fine Art visit www.gregthompsonfineart.com
