This exhibition features artistic documentation of artist Lydia Rubio’s travel narratives across linguistic and geographic landscapes. The works record the artist’s experiences across a variation of calligraphic, drawing and poetic compositions. This exhibition includes multiple series of work including The Genius Loci Book, The Journal of a Trip to the Island, and Travel Journals.
Travel Journals are a result of an early appreciation for words and calligraphy. In the 1980’s, her practice began to incorporate her fascination with to poets, the act of drawing, the life behind lines and gestures, and the sensual qualities of paper into the medium of the artist’s book. For Rubio, these books are the field where a free stream of thoughts meets the planner of strategist.

The Genius Loci Book 2014, documents the artist trips in Colombia during her extended residence, with notes, maps, watercolors and quotes from A Von Humboldt, Frederick Church, Goethe about landscape and art. The Journal of a Trip to the Island documents the artist’s trip to Cuba in 1999 and contains the studies for works that were later executed after returning to the studio. The works represent her reaction against the extreme visual and verbal turbulence within today’s world. Of them Rubio says, “in them, I look for refuge, retreat into self, silence.” Continuing this work today, her studio practice is an ongoing investigation of nature and representation in painting: imagined or perceived, the abstract or the real simulated.

Lydia Rubio is an American artist, born in La Habana, Cuba. Her work has been exhibited in 27 solo and over 50 group shows in the USA and internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Museum of Latin American Art Long Beach, CA, Snite Museum of Art, IN, Baum Gallery of Fine Art, AK, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Lowe Museum of Art, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Bianca Lanza Gallery, Gutierrez Fine Art, FL. AIR Gallery, Joyce Goldstein, Bridgewater Lustberg Gallery, NYC.

She is represented in many public and private collections, including Eskenazy Museum of Art, IN, Bryn Mawr College, PH, Stanford University, CA, UCSB Museum CA, University of Southern California, CA, Lowe Museum, Wolfsonian FIU, Diane and Robert Moss, Fracie B. Good and David Horvitz and others.
Awards and honors include two public art commissions for the RDUA Airport,NC and two for Miami Dade Art in Public Places, a residence with the WSW NY, and fellowships from Oolite Arts The Ellies, Pollock Krasner, State of Florida, The Cintas Foundation, The Graham Foundation.