Gallery Talk with Francis Sills

The Gibbes presents As the twig is bent..., Paintings and Collage by past Visiting Artist Francis Sills from December 10, 2021 - January 30, 2022, in the Ruth and Bill Baker Art Sales Gallery. Join the artist for a tour of the exhibit on Saturday, January 29 at 3 pm; admission free and open to the public. Artist Statement "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree”, an 18th century proverbial saying, reminded me of how these current paintings grew out of a suite of drawings I was doing almost 20 years earlier in graduate school. In that work, I was incorporating some of the same processes like collage, altering and repeating cut paper motifs, and ambiguously shifting spaces. This added yet another layer of reference to the notion of time passing and artistic growth. Those early influences and procedures began to shape the new paintings and became the strata which make up my work now. Those drawings, the current paper cut outs, and now decaying flowers were all composting in front of me, generating a new and multilayered series of paintings. - Francis Sills To accompany the exhibit, As the twig is bent..., Sills collaborated with the Museum Store to create a limited-edition print of the painting Terrapin. The print is numbered and signed by the artist, measuring 24 x 18 inches, and printed on archival smooth watercolor paper in an edition size of 25. Terrapin was painted while Francis Sills was in residence at the Gibbes and if you look closely, you'll see our very own The Green Fan (Girl of Toledo, Spain) by Robert Henri making an appearance among the abstract flowers and plants in the artist's studio. You can purchase the print through the Online Store and in-person.