• Home
  

• Profile
  

• Portfolio
  

• Exhibitions
  

• Contact
  

GARY GODBEE

Biography

Back to Profile

     Gary Godbee received a B.F.A. degree in painting from Boston University in 1974 and has studied graduate painting at Brooklyn College and Montclair State University.  He has taught drawing at the Art Students League, landscape and portrait painting workshops in Sante Fe for the Academy of Realist Art, and currently teaches painting courses at the Montclair Art Museum School/ Yard School of Art (since 1993) the Somerset Art Association (since 2001), and The Visual Arts Center of NJ at Summit, NJ. 

      Gary is best known for his realist landscape paintings, which often include panoramic views of northern New Jersey.  His work has been shown in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia and California, and can be found in collections in the U.S., Europe and Japan.  His one-person exhibitions have included shows at the Cudahy's Gallery in both NYC and Richmond, VA, the First Street Gallery in NYC, and the Watchung Arts Center in Watchung, NJ.   Recent exhibitions include one-person shows at the J. Cacciola Gallery, NYC, two-person shows at the Arts Guild of Rahway and the Tomasulo Gallery of Union County College (September 2003), as well as group shows at the J. Cacciola Gallery in NYC and Bernardsville, the Seraphin Gallery in Philadelphia, Tatistcheff Gallery in NYC, City Without Walls Gallery in Newark, and the Paul Robeson Gallery of Rutgers University. His work was included in the New Jersey Arts Annual at the Montclair Art Museum in the Summer of 2005.

     Gary Godbee has received Fellowships in 2004 and 1994 from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, exceptional merit awards from the City Without Walls Gallery in Newark in 2002 and 1995, and an Award of Merit from the Portrait Institute in New York in 1996.   He is represented in the 1998 Society of Illustrators Annual and is listed in Who's Who in American Art (since 2007) and Who's Who in America (since 2000).   In 2000, he completed two twenty-foot wide murals commissioned through the NJ State Council on the Arts that are now permanently installed in the Department of Labor Building in Trenton.   

     He is currently represented in NYC by the J. Cacciola Gallery.

   "My paintings are reflections of my experience of a visual world that often goes unnoticed.  I'm always looking for something surprising in the otherwise mundane; something transformative that comes out of the simple act of seeing.

     In each work I'm constantly striving to capture one essential, universal pebble of truth, and subsequently, an unexpected beauty.  Sometimes the silhouette of a tower against the sky or some unexpected flash of light in the landscape will create the moment of recognition that I want to express.  The genesis for all of my paintings comes from the basic desire to share these little epiphanies.

     I often incorporate industrial or other prominent architectural forms in a specific natural setting in order to create a sub-text of aesthetic, social and ecological considerations.  This dichotomy between the man-made and the natural is a recurring theme. 

    Formally, my frequent use of a panoramic format expands the visual field and presents different complexities of composition, and the low horizon line places emphasis on the totality of a given location. 

    I also work periodically in very small format on gessoed wood or masonite to create a greater level of intimacy between the viewer and the painting.  In the case of this format, the "objectness" of the painting simply becomes another aspect in the continuing dialogue between the modern and the traditional."

Gary Godbee