Geoffrey Lardiere graduated in 1973 from the College of Design at North Carolina State University, where in his senior year he was selected by John I. H. Baur, former director of the Whitney Museum of Art, to exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. He moved to Los Angeles in 1975 , at the age of 24, to become an award winning National Advertising Art Director in Century City, working on accounts that included Sony and Marantz Stereo.
At the age of 29, he was asked to join the faculty as a professor at Florida State University, where he taught in the Art department until 1983. For the past twenty six yeas he has worked full time as a painter, with works purchased for over 5000 public, private, and corporate collections, including IBM, American Express, Bank of America, HBO, and Walt Disney World, and the largest wall sculpture installation ever awarded by AT&T for their international marketing headquarters in New Jersey. Individual collectors, to name a few, are Arne H. Carlson, former governor of Minnesota, William Ferry, former vice chairman of the board Land's End, and Pleasant Rowland, founder and former CEO Pleasant Company/American Girl Magazine.
Geoffrey Lardiere had his first One Man Gallery Show at the age of 32, in Chicago. Many One Man shows have followed in major cities throughout the United States. He has participated in 40 invitational group shows throughout the country, including the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. He is in the permanent collections of four art museums, and the recipient of five Art in Public Place competitions, the most prestigious being the von Liebig Art Center in Naples, Florida, and the University of Florida, sponsored through the Harn Museum of Art in Gainesnville, Florida. He is also in the Art in Public Place collections for the cities of Miami-Dade, Orlando, and Tallahassee. He has participated in over 150 nationally juried Art Shows and is the recipient of more than 20 Art awards. For the past 12 years Geoffrey and his wife Ann have owned the Lardiere Gallery & Studio in Ephraim, (Door County) Wisconsin, where his paintings are exclusively represented. The Lardiere's live six months of each year in Ephraim and the remaining part of the year at Alligator Point, Florida where Geoffrey has his painting studio.
At 37, Lardiere and his wife, Ann, lost their 10 year old daughter Gia, during open heart surgery in Birmingham, Alabama. Lardiere says he began the "Birmingham Studies" as visual prayers for his daughter when she faced her first surgery at the age of three. "The artwork is a continuing memorial - to Gia - and to the amazing power of the human soul to heal and transform loss into that which is grace-full and authentic." Kay Collier-Stone, Ph.D.
Geoffrey Lardiere speaks of his work, " I purposefully lose my power by working spontaneously, without intent in my work as a painter. I intentionally go to zero. I look for surprises with the innocence of a young child. Serendipity is okay. However, since I am addicted to focus, whatever I am doing has to be the most important moment in my life. Consequently, this balancing of opposites gives me creativity and energy. In the process I go from powerlessness to authentic power in my searching for truth and grace, trying to lend form to the pain of life and color to the joys and celebration of life."
© 2008 Geoffrey Lardiere / Artist's Rights Society (ARS), New York
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