ABOUT GREG BAILEY

Greg Bailey

Greg Bailey was born in 1986, in Trelawny, Jamaica. He attended the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, where he was awarded a BFA degree in Painting in 2011. Bailey’s exhibitions have included the Jamaica 50th Anniversary Launch (2012), Stuttgart, Germany; and Social Atrocities (2014), Olympia Gallery, Kingston Jamaica, as well as the Jamaica Biennial 2014, Young Talent 2015 and Explorations IV: Masculinities (2015), which were held at the National Gallery of Jamaica. His work explores issues of race, history and society, using academic painting techniques and image-making conventions, which are referenced ironically. Bailey lives in St Catherine, Jamaica.

Nature, ever graceful yet pragmatic, determines that the seed must die in order to germinate. So too was Cecil’s transitioning graceful and impactful - a simultaneous passing and ancestral ‘spirit resurrection’. Through his accomplishments, he has left a colossal void, but he has passed on the proverbial baton of his unique artistic force.

Cooper’s contributions continue, as manifested in this auspicious occasion at Olympia Gallery, June through July 2022. He continues, from the beyond, his duty as a culture guru with an expansive definition of what constitutes Jamaican art patronage: taking on anArtists’ role as ‘patron’ through ‘philanthropy’.

He not only accumulated wealth but continues to share its bounty. In his passing, many are simultaneously healed. He has left behind numerous paintings and drawings, which speak to an immense and inexhaustibly fascinating legacy, forever worthy of examination. His lingering presence affords opportunities to young artists without the means to receive a proper education through his financial generosity. Therefore, he has a perpetual, exuberant presence and a spirit that possesses and lives within us all. Through him, many lives have changed and will change for the better - forever.

Cooper did his “Last Dance” (acrylic on canvas, 2003) while we were not watching. He spoke prophetically and quietly and created one of his final masterpieces, a major large-scale work as a final and profound rite of passage... a silky white dove, resting on the shoulder of the protagonist, a mark of selection - noting that the subject would shortly be at final rest, and the bird, its mission complete,

The University Of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. USA website: https://bryanmcfarlane.net