Bobby Bagley (b. 1974)
Arkansan Bobby Bagley is already showing great potential in a distinctive new postmodern style of his own which also echoes other artists before him such as Benny Andrews and Thomas Hart Benton. So fluid are his acrylic brushstrokes, Bagley’s subjects, almost always musicians, seem to sway and dance across their canvases.
The Gosnell High School graduate received an art scholarship in painting from the University of Central Arkansas where he recently received a Bachelor of Arts degree. While Bagley has only been painting for a few years, he was recognized in a February 2001 Arkansas Times article highlighting important black artists of Arkansas.
Bagley’s commissioned diptych (two-panel painting) compares and contrasts an old-time spirited gospel preacher and a soulful juke joint performer, both once plentiful amid the cotton fields of Arkansas’s Delta. The work depicts the duality often found between religion and the flesh, the Bible and the blues. Bagley’s art has been exhibited at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Taylors’ Contemporary Fine Arts in Hot Springs and Hearne Fine Art in Little Rock.
African American Art Collection - Philander Smith College 