Darryl Abraham's Folk creations defy classification. Though we might liken them to genre painting, they have, like much of Folk Art, no real counterpart in the realm of Fine Art. They are dramatic vignettes which seem more closely allied to storytelling than to static depiction. They celebrate a culture and energetically assert their own provinciality.

Our attraction to Folk Art derives, in part, from the fact that we grant it greater freedom from decorum. Unlike Fine Art, it has the right to be charming. Abraham's depictions often have the quality of parody or caricature, but never of condescension. If they mock, they do not elevate the mocker above the people or the values represented. The laughter they evoke is instead a social act: an act of endearment.

Abraham's vignettes embody the finest Folk traditions, too, in that they participate in the very thing they represent. Sometimes they proclaim the act of making, depicting common people in the act of building - of cobbling together lives out of various odds and ends. Like them, the artist is a laborer in the world, and his art is an act of communion as well as expression. And if the artist shares the labors of the common man, so the common laborer shares the artists ecstasy of spirit. Beneath the humorous image of Slim, we sense something profound. Alone and turned into himself, framed in the strange light of the moon, his is the momentary rapture of creation.

Darryl Abraham received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has exhibited his work in such prestigious venues as the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institute, and Rochesters Memorial Art Gallery. The United States Embassy in Tokyo and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC, are but two of the many public and private collections which include his work. He also heads a thriving landscape design business. Abraham lives in Naples, New York, and Venice, Florida.

To visit Darryl's website, click here.