FRAGMENTS OF TIME II
BRYAN MCFARLANE
March 15 - April 24, 2018
Internationally acclaimed artist Bryan McFarlane born in Moore Town, Portland is a fully tenured Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA. An artist and art educator, Professor McFarlane has lectured, painted and exhibited around the globe from his home studios in Boston, Jamaica and also Beijing, China where his 10-year association with China’s cultural, artistic and academic communities have earned him accolades and citations.
In March 2018, Professor McFarlane returns home to Jamaica for a milestone solo exhibition of over 40 large-scale works, many of which were created in his Beijing studio. This exhibition at the Olympia Gallery, Kingston will be his first solo exhibition in Jamaica in over 13 years, despite annual visits to the island to lecture and adjudicate examinations. An outstanding artist and a 2012 Musgrave medalist Bryan credits China for the inspiration behind his upcoming exhibition in Jamaica.
McFarlane explains that China has recently become a very special part of his journey. “It is exciting to see how my works and those of other colleagues from the Caribbean and Jamaica being a part of this heralding and emergence from the 1.3 billion people of China–of talents in contemporary art that may overwhelm the older art centres of Paris, Berlin, London and New York.
about the artist
Bryan Mcfarlane
Born in Moore Town Portland, Bryan McFarlane studied at The Edna Manley College of Art in Kingston and completed his MFA degree at Massachusetts College of Arts and Design, Dartmouth, USA. He taught at The Edna Manley College after graduation, and over the last two decades, has frequently returned there as an external examiner and critic. In 1997 Bryan McFarlane achieved Tenured Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and currently teaches graduate and undergraduate programs at the unviersity.
He has led study groups of art students to Jamaica, France and China and has held visiting professorships at UWI, The Rhode Island School of Design and The School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. McFarlane is working on his second collaborative project with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists—the first, a completed 3-year project called Synergy with The Woods Hole Oceanographic Center from which he developed works presented in an exhibition in 2014 at the New Bedford Art Museum and the Boston Science Museum. The second and current 3-year collaborative project with EMMAS and TERC at MIT is funded by the National Science Foundation.
McFarlane has exhibited and lectured as visiting artist at numerous universities and museums throughout the United States, Europe, China, Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean. His many accolades and awards include the prestigious Institute of Jamaica’s “Silver Musgrave Medal” for his contribution to art and art education; two Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation Awards (2005 and 2011) New York; and in 2008 a Gold medal from the Chinese Government for his entry in the Olympics Fine Arts Exhibition in Beijing.
McFarlane draws inspiration derived from his travels throughout China, East Asia, Turkey, West Africa, South America, Europe and the Caribbean. He is represented in many collections in Jamaica and internationally. In 1987 and 1996, McFarlane was commissioned by Miller Brewing Company/Phillip Morris to paint portraits of 12 leading African-American journalists, which were reproduced in the Gallery of Greats calendar and is now in the permanent collection of the Du' Sable' Museum of Chicago, Illinois.
Bryan McFarlane is based in Boston and maintains studios in Beijing and Kingston. He is married to Cao Qian, a Chinese national and they have a son.
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