Geoffrey Lardiere graduated in 1973 from The School of Design at North Carolina State University where, in his senior year, he was selected by John 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 twelve years, he has worked full time as a painter, with works purchased for over 400 public and private collections, including IBM, American Express, and the largest installation ever awarded by AT&T for their international marketing headquarters in New Jersey.
Mr Lardiere had his first One Man Gallery show at the age of 32, in Chicago, at the Gilman Gallery. Other One Man Shows have followed in Philadelphia, Miami, New Orleans, Tallahassee, Abilene, Texas and Pine Bluff, Arkansas. 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 museum collections of The Daytona Museum of Arts and Sciences, and The Pine Bluff, Arkansas Museum.
In 1987, at 36, Geoffrey Lardiere began pursuing commissions for the prestigious Art in Public Places movement in Florida. He has completed four permanent installations for Art in Public Places. The Florida A&M University, School of Architecture in Tallahassee; The Florida Department of Law Enforcement in Tallahassee, and, the Recreation and Fitness Center at the University of Florida, sponsored through the Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville. He is also in the collection of the Miami-Dade Art in Public Places, and is currently working on an Art in Public Places Project for the City of Orlando. At 43, he is the recipient of 20 awards.
At 37, Mr. Lardiere and his wife Ann lost their 10 year old daughter Gia during open heart surgery in Birmingham, Alabama. Mr. Lardiere says he began the "Birmingham Studies" as visual prayers for his daughter when she faced her first surgery at the age of 3, and continues the series today seven years later after her death to remember her soul. Other major painting series inspired by his daughter Gia are the "Forward Studies", "Down the Middle", "When She is Five and one-half or Six" and "New Birmingham". Other major painting series are "Searching for New Ideas" and the "Evolving Forms".
The Lardiere's live with their daughter Brinley in Alligator Point, Florida and Door County, Wisconsin.
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