Sunday, March 18, 2012
It's long been a truism that New Orleans is “the northernmost city of the Caribbean,” but that may be the only reasonable explanation for much of south Louisiana as well. So it's only appropriate that Lafayette artist Francis Pavy's paintings inspired by 200 years of Louisiana statehood turned up at Arthur Roger right next door to Cuba native Jose Bedia's paintings at Heriard-Cimino. Of them, Pavy's imagery is more outwardly colorful as we see in his exotic Birds of North America painting, below, a reminder of Louisiana's placement as a major flyway for migrating wild fowl. Red Raft, above, is a schematic arrangement of symbolic forms like Captain Shreve's steamboat, swamp grass and dark rain, snakes and sailor's knots amid logs burning as brightly as a Biblical portent, all united by a sense of looming epiphany within a matrix of elemental forms and tropical colors, a milieu far more redolent of the Antilles than of Vicksburg. In Modern Times, a tropical landscape is studded with broken chains and streamlined trains, the sun, the stars and the Huey P. Long bridge arranged like an old time Catholic miracle in the form of an improbable vision of progress. Pavy is good at this.
Francis Pavy: Paintings Inspired by 200 Years of Louisiana Statehood Through March 31
Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia St. 522-1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com; Jose Bedia: Recent Paintings Through April 3, Heriard-Cimino Gallery, 440 Julia St., 525-7300; www.heriard-cimino.com