Current Gallery Selections for March / April 2005

Sacred and Profane:
Paintings by Roger Rice and Felix Virgous
 

Roger Rice (b. 1958), a Mississippi born African-American ordained fundamentalist preacher, is a visionary artist in the true sense of the word.  In his best work he takes as his subject matter the invisible world of spirits and monsters -- horrendous, nightmarish, fiendish, sometimes erotic creations that one might expect to flow from a Peter Bruegel or a Hieronymus Bosch. An over-riding sense of the evil nature of humankind informs and unifies the body of work.  Since 1994, Rice has been serving a life sentence in the Mississippi penal system.   From 1987 until his incarceration, he painted 42 works, of which about 25 remain.  He is no longer allowed to work in oils, but rather is restricted to creating works on paper in colored pencil.  See additional images below and our Roger Rice webpage for more information. In stark contrast to the complex, brooding, even violent visions of Roger Rice's large oil paintings, the simply structured, small format, brightly colored biblical scenes by Felix Virgous are nonetheless powerful in their own right.  Using strong graphic images, the African-American Tennessee native presents well-known stories from the Judeo-Christian tradition --  Noah's ark, Moses and the Ten Commandments, Samson and Delilah, the Baptism of Jesus, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion -- in vibrant acrylic paint on board.  Additional images may be found below and on our webpage for Felix Virgous.		Roger Rice   The Pit   (24" x 30" ca. 1989)
		Felix Virgous   Baptism of Christ  (18" x 20" ca. 1995)