“If you grew up in the Caribbean or a tropical environment your summertime fun as a child was probably filled with fantasy and imagination while floating in the water or running and playing on the beach. And perhaps it was punctuated with little moments of silent bliss, solitude, and self-reflection or just simply marveling in wonder at the natural world around you.
The first intention of this group of paintings is focusing on that fleeting time in childhood when the long, hot summer is stretched out in front of you – where everything is new and you have nothing to do but play. The second and less obvious intention is to infuse the presence of more black and brown bodies into that homogenized arena called fine art. By implanting images of black and brown children having a chill time onto your visual cortex I am intentionally contrasting the negative images we are constantly bombarded with by every form of media. The visual cortex learns from experience and self-organizes its structure to process visual input. We need to SEE that we are all the same. We ALL want to play in the sun…we all want a sweet summer.”- Jacqueline Goapie
Jacqueline Gopie was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and lives and works in Miami, Florida. Immediately upon retiring after a twenty-one-year career in the United States Army, she attended the University of Miami where she received her BFA in 2005 and her MFA in painting in 2012. She is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation 2016 Emerging Artist Grant and credits much of her success as a painter to her professor and mentor Walter Darby Bannard.
Sweet Summertime will be on view from July 8th – August 4th, 2017 at the University of Miami Gallery located at the Wynwood Building, 2750 NW 3rd Avenue, Suite 4, Miami, FL 33127. A full schedule of exhibitions can be viewed at www.as.miami.edu/art. Gallery hours are Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, 10 am to 6 pm. Hours may be subject to change, please call (305) 284-3161 to confirm times.
