Radcliffe Bailey is a contemporary African American artist known for his mixed-media practice that delves into his black heritage and childhood in the South. Employing materials that include paint, traditional African sculpture, tintype photographs of his family, clay, and piano keys, the artist conveys the powerful sentiment of a living memory. “I believe that by making things that are very personal they become universal,” he explained. “I am first and foremost an artist, a person of this world, and an artist of African descent who grew up in the South and has chosen to continue to live and work in the South. My art is about history and the mystery of history.” Born in 1968 in Bridgeton, NJ, he grew up in Atlanta where he frequent the High Museum of Art with his mother who introduced her son to the works of James Van Der Zee and Jacob Lawrence. Bailey received his BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and has gone on to have several solo exhibitions including “Memory as Medicine,” which opened in 2011 at the High Museum of Art. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., among others. He continues to live and work in Atlanta, GA. Continue reading Profile: Radcliffe Bailey