The University of Miami presents Sweet Summertime by Jacqueline Gopie

Saturday, July 8th from 6-9pm join us at the University of Miami Art Gallery in the Wynwood Arts District for the Opening Reception of Sweet Summertime by Jacqueline Gopie. The artist 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.

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. This exhibition is on view through August 4th.

Image: Beach Baby, acrylic on wood, 6″x6″