ARTIST STATEMENT

Through rich textures, vivid colors, and dramatic contrast, Gary Logan’s artwork depicts sublime, topographic vistas, as well as magnified biological masses, that make poignant statements on identity, expose signs of human oppression, and chronicle our destruction of the natural world.

As an artist of African descent and a Gay man, Logan boldly merges various aspects of his personage, racial heritage, and sexuality with a myriad of alluring, visceral imagery inspired by nature. His mixed-media images and paintings encompass fraught themes and psychological demons, but also embrace and celebrate Blackness, Gay identity, survival, and healing. Current scientific speculation on epigenetics, dark matter, climate change and the Anthropocene emerge throughout his work and further expand themes on our elemental connection to the Earth, the complexities of human nature and our adverse impact on this planet.

Logan’s artwork vacillates between microscopic and macroscopic points of views and features an array of experimental materials and unusual surfaces that morph, erupt, and fracture from turbulent, underlying themes such as loss, human subjugation, and environmental collapse.  His images portray enigmatic landscapes and teeming biomorphic forms (reminiscent of atoms, molecules, cells, and viruses), all of which blur the lines between creation and destruction. With compositions that probe dissected organisms and explore damaged spaces, Logan reflects and represents similar psycho-social circumstances which are inherent to the human condition.

Whether creating plastic covered vistas or cross-sectioned biological forms, Logan’s provocative images deftly deconstruct, examine, and expose the dangerous tenets between patriarchal domination, dehumanization, and the detrimental consequences of our rampant consumption of the Earth. Ultimately, Logan’s artwork reminds us of our primal bonds to nature and to each other; his images are desperate pleas for awareness, reconciliation, and healing  ̶  with the underlying hope of reimagining a more socially equitable and environmentally sound future for humanity and the natural world.

ARTIST BIO

Gary Logan was born on the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago in 1970 and was raised in the United States. He attended Boston University, where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts in Painting. During his time in Massachusetts, he also developed a career in education and social service while initiating his career as an artist. He later relocated to New York and New Jersey for ten years, where he was employed as an art educator in various public schools, and then he subsequently lived in São Paulo, Brazil, where he advanced his art career while exploring Brazil’s diverse landscape and culture for a period of three years. After returning to the United States, he lived in Miami, Florida, further developed his body of work, and was employed as a visual arts director at a school for the arts. He currently resides in Seattle, Washington and devotes his time to his studio practice and teaching art. Along with his individual and group exhibitions in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, São Paulo, South Florida, St. Louis, and Venice his artwork has been highlighted in periodicals such as All the Art, Bostonia Magazine, and the literary journals, Callaloo and Agni. In 1999, he was awarded The Phillip Guston Prize along with poet Eric McHenry for their artist collaboration featured in Agni.