COSMIC RODEO

RICHARD HAGERTY SOLO EXHIBITION

Exhibition Dates: December 6 - January 3

Private Preview

Thursday, December 5, 5-7pm

Exhibition Opening & Artist Reception

Friday, December 6, 5-8pm

Artist Talk

Saturday, December 7, 10-11am

Stevenson & Co.

50 Queen Street | Charleston, South Carolina 29401

Richard Hagerty is a surrealist artist who for more than five decades has painted fantastic, visionary worlds. Often based on his dreams and fueled by intense curiosity, Hagerty's paintings explore manifold realms, including mythology, astronomy, anatomy, botany, history, philosophy and world religions.

Widely collected and exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, this prolific, self-taught artist is perhaps best known for his popular Piccolo Spoleto Festival posters. His works are part of the permanent collections of the Gibbes Museum of Art, the Burrough-Chapin Museum, and the Albany Museum of Art, as well as the College of Charleston's Addlestone Library. Formerly a plastic surgeon and frequent medical overseas volunteer, Hagerty is also an ardent conservationist and outdoorsman, perpetual student, and amateur musician.  His band, Post-Life Crisis, performs in various venues around the lowcountry. Hagerty lives and works not far from where he grew up in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. He raises Monarch Butterflies and can often be seen jogging on Edisto's dirt roads with his "grand-dogs," Gaucho, Blue, Dune, and Gunkie.

“Surrealism collapses the laws of space and time; permits all synchronicities and juxtapositions; and nurtures the logic of the dream. 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 C. Hagerty