Darrell Roberts
Chicago, IL
painter
Chicago painter Darrell Roberts creates vibrant and dynamic abstract works exploring texture, gesture and form. With rich color applied in thick and crusty impasto layers, his paintings take on an almost sculptural quality. Inspired by the ever-changing city around him, Roberts develops pieces through a lengthy process of applying paint, scraping some away and then applying more. Overtime a complex topography emerges. His paintings are often small in scale but nonetheless have a weighty physical presence. Born and raised in Iowa, Roberts earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was an artist in residence at the NIV Art Center in New Delhi, India in 2012. Roberts has exhibited his work extensively throughout the Midwest and has had many solo exhibitions in the greater Chicago area including the Thomas McCormick Gallery and the Hyde Park Art Center and he was a featured artist at EXPO CHGO 20, Chicago. Following his Tanne Award, Roberts exhibited in group shows in Nevada, Utah, Wisconsin and Nebraska and solo exhibitions in Chicago and at Simpson College in Iowa. He was a resident artist at the Shangyuan Art Museum in Beijing and is currently working on a collaborative project with artists from Bangladesh and India that will culminate in a 2016 exhibition in Delhi.
This bio/description was originally published in 2014 and updated in 2015. For more current information, please refer to the award recipient's website (if provided).