MAY2012

TOM HUCK: THE HILLBILLY KAMA SUTRA
Hillbilly Kama Sutra: XXXPulsion, 2012
16″x16″
linoleum cut print, edition of 20

Missouri artist Tom Huck is widely known for his outrageous, provocative and technically exquisite prints that are in the collections of some of the most prestigious museums in the country. The debut of Huck’s long awaited new suite of prints, The Hillbilly Kama Sutra, will take place at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art on May 4.

Tom Huck’s Hillbilly Kama Sutra, joins a long art historical tradition of thematically unified print suites. Inspired by his artist heroes such as Hogarth, Holbein and Goya, Huck has chose the timeless theme of sex, with a hillbilly twist, as the context for his biting satire of contemporary life, politics and religion. His heroes would be proud and doubled over in laughter.

Taking over two years to complete, the suiteof fourteen prints that make up “The Hillbilly Kama Sutra” is housed in a classy black velvet lined portfolio made of paneling and duct tape with a compelling peep hole. Limited to an edition of 20, collectors who acquire the complete set will get a bonus 15th “mystery suite”/

Tom Huck’s prints are included in numerous public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Fogg Art Museum and the New York Public Library, Ny; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; the St. Louis Art Museum, MO; the Daum Museum, Sedalia, MO; the Milwaukee Art Museum, WI; and Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN.

MARCUS CAIN: WONDER & DREAD
Before and After, 2012
14″x11″
acrylic, graphite, ink, latex, watercolor on panel

“These images begin to share a realm of thought that is consistent with the way I experience everyday life – as something fill of both wonder and dread…” – Marcus Cain

In Marcus Cain’s latest paintings, dots and points of color swarm together and linger at the edge of image and transformations, hovering and shifting into a likeness not of an individual, but of a spirit portrait or visual idea. In Cain’s paintings, energy gathers and dissipated, as fleeting and eternal as fireflies on a summer night or the glow of stars in the Milky Way, particles swirl in an infinite ebb and flow. It is as though the painting holds a universal soul that looks back at us through time and space, a ghostly presence with something to say.

Marcus Cain is a 2012 Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Fellow and Executive Art Director and Curator for the Kansas City Jewish Museum of COntemporary Art, Overland Park, KS. Among the public collections taht include his paintings are the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and the Sprint Corporation, Overland Park, KS; American Century Investments, and the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO.

KENT MICHAEL SMITH: N.I.M.B.Y.
Anchor,2012
40″x40″
acrylic, resin, spray paint on panel

Kent Michael Smith’s new paintings are animated by color-filled, angular and rounded shapes that jostle and nudge each other while maneuvering for position in a floating, transparent and clever world. Suspended in resin, the painted shapes overlap and form alliances, scatter and hover, encroaching, defining, and casting slim shadows on the topography below.

For this series of paintings, Smith uses the title N.I.M.B.Y., an acronym for Not In My Back Yard, as a metaphor for the inherently contentious tension he “feels” is at their core. Smith states, “While it isn’t difficult to imagine these progressively intruding forms as symbols of development and urban sprawl, my desire is for the conflict (and its pending resolution) to be the first and lasting impression.”

Among the public collections that include Kent Michael Smith’s paintings are the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS, Emprise Bank Corporate Collection, Wichita, KS and the University of Kansas Hospital, Kansas City, KS.

ANNE AUSTIN PEARCE: Undertow
The Ride, 2012
83″ x 50″
ink, liquid acrylic on paper

“my work usually starts with what I perceive as an unanswerable question and the quest for a construction of answer occurs in the process of painting and drawing. It is an exorcism through mark-making.” – Anne Austin Pearce

Since childhood, Anne Austin Pearce has used her experiences as her guide to understand herself. A thoughtful, deliberate observer and participant in life in all its complexity and contradiction. Pearce looks to her studio practice with absolute trust in the process of drawing and painting to translate and transform her interactions into pure visual language. Often in Pearce’s paintings, she has merged abstraction and the female figure as a way to talk about the human condition. However, in her most recent series of work, Undertow, the figure has vanished completely and the marks and patterns that once barely tethered the figure to the world have turned into water.

In water, Pearce has arrived at the perfect metaphor for her inquiry into “the unnameable corridor of emotion” held in the space between daily life and the unconscious. Pearce’s unfathomable depths of water are both inside (we are made of water) and outside (water is the source of life itself).

Anne Austin Pearce is a 2012 Charlotte Foundation Visual Artist Award Fellow and has paintings in the permanent collections of the Nerman Museum of Art, Overland Park, KS and the University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, in addition to numerous private collections.

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