IN TANDEM WITH EXPO CHICAGO 2021, WHICH IS ONLINE THIS YEAR, WE HAVE AN IN-PERSON PREVIEW OF THE FAIR AT OUR NEW YORK SPACE THROUGH APRIL 10. BOOK A VISIT HERE.
De Buck Gallery is pleased to present a group selection of multimedia works that explore identity through both historical and imagined narratives. Central to our booth are the selection of new paintings by Stephen Towns which will later be included at his upcoming solo exhibition, ‘Declaration and Resistance,’ in 2022 at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, PA. In order to create this breathtaking body of work, Towns mined the photographic archives of West Virginia and South Carolina for imagery that spoke to both his personal history and the collective history of America and the African American community. With a color palette drawn from the artist’s childhood memories of his home state, South Carolina, the dynamic paintings bring lost histories alive. This Online Viewing Room aims to highlight the artistic process behind Towns’ beautiful canvases. By showcasing these process pictures, it uncovers the underpainting, markings and materials that helped to shape the canvases into their final form.
Stephen Towns is a painter working primarily in oil, acrylic and fibres. His work explores how American history influences contemporary society. He aims to create a body of work exploring the African Diaspora and draws much of his visual inspiration from Medieval altarpieces, impressionist paintings, and wax cloth prints. The work he creates is deeply rooted in the constructs of race and its effects on society. It is developed in direct response to issues that have affected African-American culture–issues such as loss of ancestral roots, slavery, class, education, skin tone and religion. The subjects in Towns’s works are not only glimpses of the sitters; they are also a reflection of himself and mirror his struggle to attain a sense of self-knowledge, self-worth and spirituality. His practice provides an avenue for him to process all that he has learned about the violence of American history and imparted a framework on how to navigate and articulate the current anger and frustration that exists throughout the world today.
Stephen Towns was born in 1980 in Lincolnville, South Carolina, and received a Bachelor of Fine Art in painting from the University of South Carolina. His work has been exhibited locally and nationally, including solo exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, York College, Goucher College, Galerie Myrtis, as well as group exhibitions at Jack Shainman Gallery: The School, August Wilson Cultural Center, Arlington Art Center, Montpelier Arts Center, Star-Spangled Banner Flag House and Museum. His work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, American Craft Council Magazine, and The Baltimore Sun. Towns was honored as the inaugural recipient of the 2016 Municipal Art Society of Baltimore Travel Prize and received a Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance Rubys Artist Grant in 2015. In 2018, Towns was a semi-finalist for Sondheim Artscape Prize and awarded a MD State Arts Council’s Individual Artist Award. Towns’s work is in the private collection of Art + Practice, artist Mark Bradford’s non-profit based in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art and the City of Charleston, South Carolina, The Nelson Atkins Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, and is in private collections internationally. In 2022, Towns will exhibit Declaration and Resistance, a solo exhibition of paintings and quilts at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Pennsylvania.
To view our Online Viewing Room featuring a selection of quilt works by Tina Williams Brewer, which also form part of our presentation at Expo Chicago, follow the link below.
