David Bates: The Katrina Paintings

For decades, Texas-based artist David Bates has chronicled the people and places along America’s bucolic Gulf Coast. Bates, like many Americans, was overwhelmed by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and its destruction. In David Bates: The Katrina Paintings, the artist boldly addresses Katrina, one of the most severe and inexplicable tragedies of our time and its devastating aftermath. In this series, Bates’ paintings affirm both horror and life and remind us again why art defines our civilizations.

Listen to a Kemper ARTcast related to the exhibition.

Above: David Bates, The Flood, 2006–07, oil on canvas, 86 x 64 inches, Collection of Lillian W. and Katherine E. Albritton, Dallas, Texas; photo: David Wharton