Pryor Fine Art Presents Dennis Campay and Laura Schiff Bean

by Dennis Campay

November 5 through 26

Pryor Fine Art is thrilled to announce its November exhibition, a show featuring Atlanta icon Dennis Campay in his first show at the gallery. Campay’s new works will be shown alongside artist Laura S. Bean. The show begins with an Opening Reception on Friday, November 5 from 6 to 9 p.m. and will run through November 26.

Celebrated mixed-media artist, Dennis Campay, divides his time between Atlanta and the historic neighborhood of San Marco in Jacksonville, Florida. With his paintings, he invokes languorous, richly colored worlds of reverie and reality, intimacy and spiritual journey. Drawing on a language of symbols that suggest rather than shout, Campay’s paintings combine vaguely European cityscapes with distinctly Southern imagery. His pictures present a mesmerizing mix of Doric columns, porticos, slatted shutters, and balconies, gently coexisting with coastal marshes, whitewashed churches, boats, and bridges. Silvery bodies of water, worn books, the solitary piano, and ubiquitous chairs take their place where interiors and exteriors blend and beckon, evoking memories, illusions and dreams.

by Laura Schiff Bean

Campay has received numerous prizes and honors including for his work on paper at the prestigious 2001 Florence Biennale. In 2006 in conjunction with the Quinlan Visual Arts Center he was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant. Most recently in 2010 he has been honored to be the featured artist at the High Arts Day, High Museum of Art, Atlanta and will be a Visiting Artist at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in April of 2011. Campay has been featured in Art & Antiques magazine, New American Paintings and he is the subject of John T. Spike’s book, Campay: New Paintings (2002). His original mixed media works and drawings are hanging in public and private collections across the United States, including US Airways and King & Spalding, LLP, The University of Florida and Brenau University. Museum acquisitions include the Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville FL, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA. and the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah GA.

Massachusetts artist Laura Schiff Bean has always found significance in clothing, particularly in dresses. Years later, these special garments have become the central theme in her paintings. For Bean, dresses have served as defining icons as she has searched for a definition of self and later for things more abstract and indefinable. As her search expanded, the dresses underwent a metamorphosis, encompassing issues far more personal and conversely, more universal. Her ethereal paintings are a daily record of her search for the truth as well as homage to the searches of women who have come before, as the dresses reveal an interior world of unspoken secrets and leave the viewer possibly feeling a bit naked. Schiff earned a BA from George Washington University and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has shown throughout Boston and Massachusetts, and this is her second show at Pryor Fine Art.

About Pryor Fine Art
Pryor Fine Art – formerly Bennett Street Gallery – strives to engage a contemporary stable of artists who exemplify innovation in technique, content and quality. Today, the gallery represents more than 40 artists from Atlanta and throughout the United States. Pryor Fine Art is located at 22-F Bennett Street, Atlanta, Georgia 30309. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit: www.pryorfineart.com or call 404-352-8775. 
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