H. E. Roe: fire and flood

Jul 2 - aug 1, 2024

FIRST WEDNESDAY OPENING: July 3 FROM 6 - 9PM

ARTICULATE ARTIST TALK: SUNDAY, July 7, AT 4PM.

NORMAL GALLERY HOURS: TUE - SUN, 12PM - 6PM

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Herb Roe was born and spent his childhood in the Appalachian regions of Southern Ohio and Northeastern Kentucky. In 1992 he received a scholarship to the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio and attended his freshman year there. In the summer of 1993 he met the Louisiana mural artist Robert Dafford. He subsequently apprenticed to and worked for Dafford for 15 years on long term historical mural projects in cities throughout the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys. In 2007 Roe began to pursue a career as a fine artist, specializing in fine art oil paintings depicting the history and culture of the American South, focusing on his adopted home in South Louisiana’s Acadiana region and his childhood home in rural Appalachian eastern Kentucky.

For the last few years I've been working on a pan-Southern series of oil paintings exploring life in the south, my childhood home and roots in Appalachia, and my adulthood traveling and working in the southern US as an itinerant muralist before settling in Louisiana.
My paintings are presented through an evolving set of personal symbols that I use as shorthand for universal concepts about the human condition and life in the American South. The work explores themes as diverse as contemporary politics, suicide, religion, environmental issues, and how we deal with our heritage and inheritance from our ancestors. These themes are filtered through the lens of folklore and folk songs, antique family photos and drawings, memories from childhood, my grandmothers quilts, and anything else that happens to bubble up through my subconscious, set in mythic southern landscapes of foggy hills and hollers or moss draped bayous.
The works individually begin as quick notions doodled in my sketchbooks, and then often ruminated on and expanded over several years time as I seek to define how best to portray the idea. Once I've decided on a composition, the idea is transferred to a canvas, in graphite or charcoal, and blocked in a grisaille tonal underpainting. In a technique based in western classical realist traditions I then build up layers of light and color in impasto and translucent oil glazes. This technique allows me to determine the subject and mood for a piece at its inception; and then to focus on achieving that effectively through use of light and color without the distractions of rearranging my compositions as the work progresses. - Roe

This exhibition is presented alongside the latest works from Amy James, Audra Kohout, and Katherine Scherer. All works from these artists are on view, free of charge, during regular gallery hours (12 - 6 p.m., Tue - Sun) from Jul 2 - Aug 1, 2024.