“Invitational Card 1981” by Freddie Styles

4 x 9 inches, watercolor on card, 1981 — unframed

Freddie Styles, a native of Georgia is a committed abstractionist, although references to nature have been at the center of his paintings and collages throughout his long career. He is an avid gardener, and the distinction between this passion and his passion for making art is blurred each symbiotically informing the other.

For the past several years, Freddie Styles has been creating works of uncommon and resonating beauty. In a truly unique process, Styles presses layers of crinkledfax paper (the old-fashioned coated type) onto wet acrylic painton silver coated gessoed paper. The kaolin coating on the fax paper adheres to the drying acrylic paint, some of the silver paint is revealed which creates another layer of depth to the works. During this process some of the paint adheres to the strips of fax paper, which are recycled to create his Evolving and Silver Trees series of collages. Styles process informs his work, and the outcome of each piece is unpredictable. In other words, the artist is both controlling and relinquishing control of his materials, and this conceptual stance is his departure point.

His forms are reminiscent of organic vegetation, but his interpretation of the organic world stripped down to its essential vascular structure is not meant to be literal. Styles has achieved a unique method of reflecting natures forms, textures, patterns, and colors, revealing a window to a more spiritual world and imbuing his audience with a new appreciation.

Freddie Styles attended Morris Brown College and lives in Atlanta. He has served as an artist-in-residence at Clark Atlanta University, Clayton State University, and Spelman College. In the past, Styles receivedpurchase awards from the Atlanta University Art Annuals and Atlanta Life Insurance Company. In 1997, Styles joined the ranks of the Whos Who of international artists when he was commissioned to create an ad for Absolut Vodka. In 2001, he was awarded a King Baudouin Foundation Cultural Exchange Program grant through the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta to work and study in Belgium. From 2003-2008 he served as Gallery Director and Curator of City Gallery East. During his tenure atCity Gallery East, he worked closely with the City of Atlantas Art On Loan Program participating in theacquisition and placement of work in city offices including the Mayors office, the Civic Center and various recreation centers.

Styles has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including African American Abstraction at City Gallery East in Atlanta; Evolving, a solo show at the Airport Atrium Gallery at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and Kiang Gallery in Atlanta; Old, New, Borrowed, Blue at Clark-Atlanta University; Roots,Needles and Fax at the Tubman Museum in Macon, GA; and Freddie Styles at the Bill Hodges Gallery in NYC. Museum group exhibitions include the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, GA and most recently, Drawing Inside the Perimeter at the High Museum in Atlanta, GA, theAmerican Embassies in Sierra Leone, South Africa and Trinidad & Tobago, Traditions Defined Redefined; and The Brenda and Larry Thompson Collection at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA. One of his paintings was included, and sold in the recently concluded Swann Auction Galleries auction, Point of Departure: Postwar African American Art.

His work can be found in public and private collections that include: the HIGH Museum, Atlanta, GA;Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Atlanta, GA; MOCA/GA, Atlanta, GA;Spelman College Museum ofArt, Atlanta, GA; the City of Atlanta,Clark Atlanta University Collection, Atlanta, GA; Metro Health Center Collection,Cleveland, Ohio; The Saint Louis Museum, Saint Louis, MO; King and Spalding Collection, Atlanta, GA; Kerry and C Betty Davis Collection, Clarkston, GA; Kenneth and Cynthia Prince Collection, Stone Mountain, GA; the Robert W Woodruff Library, AU Center, Atlanta, GA; The IP Steinbeck Museum and Planetarium, Orangeburg, SC; Atlanta Housing Collection, Atlanta, GA; the Paul Jones Collection, Atlanta, GA; theUniversity of Delaware; the University of Alabama atTuscaloosa; the Brenda and Larry Thompson Collection, Chautauqua, NY, Washington, DC, Atlanta, GA and Sea Island,GA; The Georgia Museum, Athens, GA ; Absolut Vodka, Sweden;and private collections in Germany, Belgium and France.