Through the Achromatic Lens: Gary Chapman

In co-sponsorship with the Watkins College of Art at Belmont University and the Leu Art Gallery, the Tennessee Arts Academy is proud to present a virtual professional art exhibition entitled, Through the Achromatic Lens: GARY CHAPMAN. This exhibition Is being made available for viewing to all TAA participants during the 2021 Tennessee Arts Academy in July. The artist will also present a virtual “Artist Talk” on Monday and Wednesday during the Academy sessions.

Please Click Here to Access Through the Achromatic Lens: GARY CHAPMAN.

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Gary Chapman
Artist Statement
Working in black and white has been a part of my repertoire for more than thirty-five years. However, as a primarily conceptual-based, figurative painter, I have typically regarded this black and white work as peripheral to my main body of work. 

For the last ten years, I have been teaching charcoal workshops at various universities, galleries, and museums. It has only been in the last three or four years that I have allowed these experiences and processes to bleed over into my main work—particularly in my CONSTRUCTIONS and Black Metal series.

I was intrigued and excited when the Tennessee Arts Academy and Belmont University’s Watkins College of Art invited me to create a virtual exhibition with a focus on my black and white work. The exhibition highlights five distinct bodies of work:

The Charcoal Drawings

The Black Metal Series

The Firmament: Falling Floating Flying

108 Black Paintings and the COTA Project

The CONSTRUCTIONS Series

Artist Biography
Gary Chapman is an artist and professor of painting and drawing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Chapman has had more than seventy solo exhibitions with institutions including the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, the Arts Center of St. Petersburg in Florida, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Georgia, and the Indianapolis Art Center. He has also participated in numerous group and invitational exhibitions with regional, national, and international venues. Chapman was awarded and named a Joan Mitchell CALL Legacy Artist in 2013 and has received numerous grants and fellowships, including a 1996 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Painting from the Southern Arts Federation. His work has been reviewed extensively and is published in more than twenty catalogs and books, including the four editions of New American Paintings.

Artist Talk (During Interludes)

Monday • July 12, 2021 • 4:30 - 5:00 PM
Wednesday • July 14, 2021 • 3:00 - 3:30 PM

The artist talk will be made available to all Tennessee Arts Academy participants over the TAA virtual platform.