The Gate to Purgatory by Richard Hagerty
Press Release
The City of North Charleston's Cultural Arts Department is pleased to announce that concurrent solo exhibitions of oil paintings by Richard “Duke” Hagerty (Charleston, SC) and clay works by Chilly Waters (Wagener, SC) will be on display at Park Circle Gallery from September 1-October 1, 2022. A free reception hosted by the artists will be held at the gallery on Friday, September 2, from 5 pm to 7 pm. The public is invited to attend.
Hagerty: New Works – Surrealist oil paintings by Richard “Duke” Hagerty
Surrealist artist Richard “Duke” Hagerty has been painting fantastic, visionary worlds for more than 40 years. Often based on his dreams and fueled by intense curiosity, his oil paintings explore manifold realms, including mythology, astronomy, anatomy, botany, history, philosophy, and world religions. His exhibition, Hagerty: New Works, features pieces completed in the last two years that include examples of both his narrative and geometric art. The goal of this exhibit is to introduce Hagerty's style of surrealism to North Charleston. “Surrealism collapses the laws of space and time; permits all synchronicities and juxtapositions; and nurtures the logic of the dream,” he explains. “The style of surrealism is a visual language which allows me—a southerner by birth who is also formally trained in the rigors and discipline of science—to explore and express my obsessions with deep history, fascination with myth and symbol, and inexhaustible curiosity about color and form.”
Richard “Duke” Hagerty was born in 1950 in Durham, NC, at Duke University Hospital, the place for which he is nicknamed. Raised in Charleston, his first serious exposure to art came in his youth when he attended the salons of the museum and education pioneer, Laura Bragg, in her Charleston home. Bragg introduced Hagerty to the work of Hieronymous Bosch and Henri Rousseau, whom he deeply admired. Hagerty grew up with his future wife and “muse” Barbara, who joined him at Johns Hopkins University, where he received his undergraduate degree. The couple married and moved to Durham where he started Duke University Medical School. After completing his residency training in plastic surgery at Emory University, he returned to Charleston in 1984 and entered his father's practice, which evolved into his own. While working as a plastic surgeon during the day and painting creative visions in the night hours, he and Barbara raised a family of four children. Richard credits a Jungian professor he had in medical school for teaching him how to pay attention and cites the Collective Unconscious and dreams as the source and inspiration for much of his work. Widely collected and exhibited, Hagerty has been the focus of numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries in Charleston, Atlanta, New York City, Nantucket, and more. He is currently represented by Mitchell Hill Gallery in Charleston, SC, and The Gallery at Four India Street in Nantucket, MA. Learn more about the artist at www.RichardHagertyArt.com.
FaceTime by Chilly Waters
Words Matter – Clay works by Chilly Waters
In his exhibition, Words Matter, clay artist Chilly Waters presents a collection of sculptures that explore his fascination with regional idioms and colloquialisms, interpreting these cultural terms and phrases as literal representations of the individual components that make up the whole. Through clay and repurposed “trash,” he constructs whimsical 3D depictions of what his mind's eye sees when he hears such phrases spoken aloud. “As a world citizen who loves to travel and experience other cultures, I see the look of bewilderment in the eyes of people for whom English is not their primary language when they hear such terms,” Waters explains. “I often wonder what goes through their minds when they are confronted with these terms and phrases.” Each piece in this exhibition is what he imagines they picture in their minds as they try to interpret and make sense of what they have just heard.
Chilly Waters has been working as a clay artist for six years. He is predominately self-taught and has molded his skills and style through workshops and networking with other artists. He is a member of the Midlands Clay Art Society, and his work has been shown in galleries in Aiken and Columbia, SC, as well as various arts festivals in South Carolina and Delaware. See more of the artist's work on Facebook at facebook.com/ChillyWatersStudio or on Instagram @ChillyWatersStudio.
The Park Circle Gallery is located at 4820 Jenkins Avenue in North Charleston. Admission is free and free street parking is available on Jenkins Avenue in front of the gallery, as well as on the adjacent streets and in parking lots close by. Gallery hours are 11:00am-6:00pm Wednesday-Friday, and Noon-4:00pm on Saturday. PCG will be closed on Saturday, September 3, for the Labor Day weekend. For more information about PCG, call 843-637-3565 or email culturalarts@northcharleston.org. For information on other Cultural Arts programs and artist opportunities, visit the Arts & Culture section of the City's website at www.northcharleston.org.
