Gail Roberts | Natural Selection
Upcoming exhibition
Overview
Opening Reception: Saturday November 2, 11am-2pm
“We are civilized generation number 500 or so, counting from 10,000 years ago when we settled down. We are Homo sapiens generation number 7,500 counting from 150,000 years ago when our species presumably arose. And we are human generation number 125,000, counting from the earliest Homo species.”
-Annie Dillard, “For the Time Being”
Quint Gallery is pleased to announce Gail Roberts: Natural Selection, an exhibition of recent paintings by the artist. In a follow up to her 2021 exhibition at the gallery, Color Field, her paintings of flowers discover a tension point between surreal and hyperreal. Arranged in square grids ranging from 1' to 8', each panel depicts a detail of a different flower and collectively, they form a futuristic hybrid of a single flower. When installed, the variation in sizes alludes to large, showy flowers in contrast to tiny, overlooked blossoms in the garden.
Roberts tends to an expansive garden she has grown at her home, paying close attention to each flower, weed, vegetable, fruit tree, cactus and succulent, documenting their life cycles in photos which become references for her paintings. In these zoomed in representations, no detail nor history is overlooked. The artist has researched each flower’s botanical history, cultivation, and natural habitat, an ecosystem whose evolution spans centuries and continents. Some have ancient origins with fossilized specimens dating back 80 million years, native to origins of North, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, China, the Middle East, and Australia.
In the series which preceded this one, Roberts granted flowers of every size and significance equal scale in what she called a ‘documentary on democracy.’ This new work retains the same spirit but engages with the theory of natural selection, with Roberts determining which elements of each subject will play a role in the final composition. This process has led the artist to muse on Darwin’s concept of “survival of the fittest” in relationship to unconscious or simulated determinants forming the intricacies of a plant or human’s genotype, and ultimately the vast and unknown possibilities of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence.
Roberts says: “The paintings are not meant to be ominous, rather a reaffirmation of my continued sense of wonder in the unending variations in nature’s patterns, colors, and shapes. As time passes, I have an even greater sense of urgency in valuing every precious moment, knowing I am just a blip in Earth’s lifetime radar.”
Gail Roberts’ work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including the Centro Estatal de las Artes in Tijuana and Ensenada; Galeria Nacional, San Jose, Costa Rica; Musee Rochefort-en-terre, Brittany, France; Ballinglen Museum of Contemporary Art, Ballycastle, Ireland; Carnegie Museum, Oxnard, CA; Oceanside Museum of Art, CA; Riverside Museum, CA; Fresno Metropolitan Museum, CA; California Center for the Arts Museum, and Madison Art Center, WI. Her work is included in permanent collections at the Oakland Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, as well as numerous corporate and private collections. Roberts has received various awards including the San Diego Art Prize, California Arts Council Fellowship and residency fellowships in France, Costa Rica and Ireland. She has completed public art commissions at the Chicago Public Library, Lux Art Institute, San Diego International Airport, Gibbs Cancer and Research Center and the Bearden-Josey Center, South Carolina. Gail Roberts received her BFA and MA at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and is a Professor of Art Emerita at San Diego State University.
Selected Works
