Beezy Bailey

‘He makes African jazz in paint, gar­ish as the mid­day sun, dark as the deep­est night.’ – Bri­an Eno

Beezy Bai­ley aspires to cre­ate art as a balm for a mad world – a cor­rec­tive for our most lam­en­ta­ble human qual­i­ties, includ­ing a plan­et bru­tal­ized by extremes of wealth and pover­ty, envi­ron­men­tal igno­rance and neg­li­gence. The sources of his imagery are elu­sive. In his own words: ​‘frozen dreams, images and leg­ends enter from my sub­con­scious, the realm of my imag­i­na­tion. I act as a con­duit for visu­al mes­sages greater than I am.’ This new mono­graph embraces the entire spec­trum of Bailey’s cre­ative out­put over the past thir­ty-five years, from sculp­ture and ceram­ics to paint­ings, prints and drawings. 

Richard Cork is an art crit­ic, his­to­ri­an, broad­cast­er and exhi­bi­tion cura­tor, based in Lon­don. He has served as the art crit­ic of the Evening Stan­dard and The Times, and been Slade Pro­fes­sor of Fine Art at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, and Hen­ry Moore Senior Fel­low at the Cour­tauld Institute. 

Roslyn Sul­cas is a cul­ture writer and dance crit­ic for the New York Times, cur­rent­ly based in Lon­don. She began her writ­ing career in Paris, cov­er­ing dance for a num­ber of British and Amer­i­can jour­nals, before relo­cat­ing to New York and join­ing the Times. She is a keen col­lec­tor of South African art.

’I’m a ped­dler of beau­ty. That’s my job. It might sound corny, but I try to find light and mag­ic in my work. This has been an ongo­ing theme through­out my life.’ – Beezy Bailey