Artist Lawrence Wells returned to northern Mississippi for an exhibition at Yalo Studio accompanied by the publication of Lawrence Wells: Bohemian.
The presentation brought together work developed during several exhibitions in the Czech Republic between 2011 and 2014.
Between Mississippi and Prague
Wells studied at the University of Mississippi before working in New Orleans and New York and later settling in Prague.
That movement between the American South and Central Europe became part of the way he understood his own position as an artist.
He linked his use of bright colour, rough figuration and representational imagery to Southern visual culture, while his experience in Prague introduced another layer of historical and cultural references.
Painting in series
Wells described his practice as developing through loosely structured series rather than rigid plans.
Recurring subjects included imaginary portraits, monkeys, still lifes, astronauts, ships and other familiar symbols drawn from popular culture.
For him, a painting needed to retain enough ambiguity to reward repeated looking.
He also saw the physical process of painting as important in itself: layers, brushstrokes, colour decisions and revisions remain visible as a record of how the work was made.
The exhibition and accompanying book therefore functioned as a partial self-portrait, tracing how memory, migration and popular imagery had shaped several years of his practice.