Bayou City Art Festival Downtown 2010 Featured Artist Jeannie Maddox

The Bayou City Art Festival announces Jeannie Maddox as the Featured Artist for the 39th Annual Bayou City Art Festival Downtown, October 9 & 10, 2010.

From the flat, white surface of Jeannie Maddox's canvas, a swimmer's head erupts, breaking past two dimensional bounds, eyes closed, face sheathed in water, seeming more real than the object from which it springs. When Jeannie Maddox finishes the painting, the waters of the pool and the abstracted shapes of the body beneath it are just striking in their clarity.

Jeannie was born and raised in Dothan, Alabama, where she lives today with her husband Sam Maddox.

Known for her works of photorealism, especially her Swimmer Series, Jeannie's work has spanned three decades of remarkable success. Her larger-than-life oil paintings have been acquired by collectors from Japan, Italy, Holland, Venezuela, Switzerland, and throughout the United States. She and her husband have been showing her work at juried festivals and events across the country since 1969.

The works are based on photographs that both Jeannie and Sam take form their travels around the country. Once Jeannie has decided on the image and how it will be executed, Sam begins the process of building the armatures (framework). These are cut from cabinet grade Birch plywood. In many cases the canvases are three-dimensional, which involves multiple armatures. Each one is individually stretched and then gessoed and finally screwed together. Some of the larger 4' x 6' 3-D canvases can take as much as 100 hours to build. Jeannie's painting process is Ala Prima, or wet-into-wet, and often takes up to 450 hours to complete.

This will be Jeannie’s fifth time showcasing her work at the Bayou City Art Festival. Visit Jeannie’s website at www.jeanniemaddox.com.

Above:  “Surfacing” from the Swimmer Series