The exhibition The Roses of Fibonacci by John William Bailly is accompanied by a catalog featuring a heartfelt poem written by United States Poet Laureate Richard Blanco and an insightful essay by Melissa Diaz, the Cultural Arts Curator at the Deering Estate. Reflecting on transatlantic exchange through examination of history, culture, and influence of the Americas and Europe, the show expresses a refraction of the artist’s complex interior landscape in layers of deep research, academic pursuit, mathematics, mythology, literature, poetry, and the flora and fauna of the natural world; these datapoints converge and re-emerge in dynamic, dimensional explosions on paper and canvas. Melissa Diaz writes: “Drawing on a wide range of art historical references, Bailly’s approach to painting is a process that is as meticulous and methodical as it is expressive and intuitive. His mark-making is a layering of an adroit awareness of disegno of the Renaissance masters, charged with the spontaneity of American Abstract Expressionist action painting.”

The exhibition includes three energetic, large-scale paintings, evocative of grand history works of the 19^th century. Matching the intensity of the larger works is the concentrated power of a smaller suite of paintings presenting heavily obscured portraits of the first European explorers to the Americas. The Project Room, as curated by FIU Honors student Sofia Guerra, houses flat files with over 1,000 intricate, jewel-like works on paper by the artist.

John William Bailly surveys formulas, patterns, figures, flowers, mangroves, and maps within a palette born of Miami’s blue sky and ocean. As a French-American artist who lives in both hemispheres, questions of cultural identity and the inevitability of rebirth through conflict are a central consideration of his paintings. Diaz observes, “The exhibition as a whole demonstrates Bailly’s capacity to weave together personal and collective histories about cultural and locational identities.”