Jim Bird

Art Brokerage: Jim Bird British Artist: b. 1937-2010. In 1962, Bird left a successful design studio in England to live as an artist in Spain. He soon became affiliated with Galeria Joan Prats, one of the most prestigious galleries in Spain. After coming to the U.S. in 1980, one of the first people Bird looked up was Robert Motherwell. He and Motherwell became friends and exhibited their work together both in Spain and the U. S. After Motherwell's death, Bird served as the only artist on the six-person board of the Daedalus Foundation, established by Motherwell to distribute his art to public institutions in the U.S. Bird's works frequently illustrate Motherwell's insistence that sometimes the artist is privileged to be "an expresser of adoration for the miracle of a world that has colors, meaningful shapes, as spaces that may exhibit the real expansion of the human spirit as it moves and has its being." Bird's works frequently depict what he calls "Landscapes of the Mind," most often keyed to his memories and feelings about Spain, but all concerned with the space in which the human spirit creates to discover its freedom. As Bird said in a 1990 essay for a show at Galeria Joan Prats, his longtome dealer, "If one accepts the premise that art can be the mirror within which we may see ourselves, then the quest should be to get the glass true. The problem is that it never is quite true and the image we see is distorted, but, before dismissing one mirror for another, judgment should be suspended, as mostly the unconscious reach is greater than the conscious grasp. It is obvious that great art has its source at some point beyond conscious striving, and if this fount is to become accessible it requires an act of faith on the part of the artist to do "nothing" and to allow the dreaming and fantasizing, that least understood part of the creative endeavor, to take place, the space in which the wretchedness of the human condition is re-composed and put into an acceptable form." Jim Bird's work has been shown at galleries and museums in Spain, England, Germany, and the U. S. (Barcelona, Madrid, London, New York, Chicago, Madison, and Palo Alto, among other sites); he has also been shown at the Basel Art Fair, the International Navy Pier Exposition in Chicago, and the International Print Biennale (England). Jim Bird was also in the news when The Journal of Art illustrated one of his monotypes (one of the Madison Series executed at Wayne Taylor's studio and published by Spaightwood Galleries several years ago) in an essay entitled, "The Elusive Monotype: Painting or Print?" in the June-July-August 1991 issue. In 1994, his work was featured in the first issue of Graven Images: Studies in Culture, Law, and thee Sacred (published by the University of Wisconsin Law School), and one of his etchings was featured on the rear cover. Listings wanted by Art Brokerage.