Radcliffe Bailey | the artist

There is a polyphonic aspect to Radcliffe Bailey’s work that results at least in part from the role of music in his life. I felt this effect immediately on encountering his latest series of painted wood panels (each almost seven feet square), whose design and excess of information endow the visual with the spatial and environmental qualities of music. “What I do may not even be called art,” Bailey once remarked. “It may be called music.”

By the River

Bailey’s work is known for the vital connections it makes: between art and life, people and the land, ancestors and their descendants. "Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents and great-grandparents," he says, "and I feel like that’s lost in most families today. In my art, I try to restore some of the lost kinship between people…"

"There’s a certain time in your career when you have the desire to give back — to share what you may know"