RED GROOMS
the first drawings, original carvings, & new wall paintings
29 October - 20 December 2025
Grooms grew up in Nashville and showed a fascination with art at an early age. He took classes at the Tennessee State Children’s Museum, worked for the Nashville artist Juanita Green Williams at her studio on West End Avenue, attended Hillsboro High School, where, during his senior year, he and his friend Walter Knestrick exhibited their paintings at Myron King’s Lyzon Gallery in Nashville. He studied professionally at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Nashville’s Peabody College, and the New School in New York City. Since the early 1960s his work has been widely exhibited, admired, and collected. Since Ruckus Manhattan, his acclaimed exhibition at Marlborough Gallery in 1976, Grooms has staked his claim as one of America’s most original, inventive, and popular artists. He has received numerous awards and commissions throughout his career, including the National Academy of Design’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. His work can be found in more than forty public institutions, including his monumental “Bus” which was installed this year as a permanent part of the new Rotterdam Museum of Migration. Presently, a large portion of Ruckus Manhattan is on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He continues to work in his Manhattan studio every day - or at least when he is not in his Tennessee studio in Beersheba Springs.
1) Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel, 2025 ink on paper14 x 52 50 in
2) William Edmundson, 1996 ink on paper14 x 11 in
3) Kitty Wells - Eugene Lewis - Purity Dairy Truck - Goo Goo Boy, 1997, ink on paper17 x 14 in
4) Charlie Dynasty Soong, 1997 foam carving, 68 x 12 x 66 in
5) Eugene Lewis, 1998 foam carving, 70 x 20 x 64 in
6) Kitty Wells, 1996 ink on paper, 11 x 14 in
7) Mr. Foxtrot, 1996 ink on paper, 11 x 14 in
8) Sequoyah, 1996 ink on paper, 11 x 14 in
9) Roy Acuff, 1996 ink on paper, 11 x 14 in
10) Davy Crockett, 1996 ink on paper, 11 x 14 in
11) Moses and Calvin McKissack III, 1996 ink on paper, 11 x 14 in
12) Adelicia Acklen, 1997 carved styrofoam, 56 x 12 x 59 in
13) H. G. Hill, 1997 foam carving, 60 x 12 x 58 in