The colorful hand-drawn images of artist Gary Bachers were a staple at art festivals around the country and none appreciated them more than the collectors at Texas shows, including Edom Art Festival and Cottonwood Art Festival that take place each October. Bachers passed away in August 2023 but attendees at the Edom and Richardson festivals this year will be happy to find his artwork once again among the sea of artists’ tents.
His wife and business partner Gabrielle — a talented fiber artist — continues to show his art and has worked diligently this past year organizing and preparing his life’s work for exhibitions to continue sharing his inspiring story.
Gary and Gabrielle moved to New Boston, Texas, west of Texarkana, after he graduated from medical school at the University of Manitoba in his hometown of Winnipeg, Canada. For 10 years, he served the rural community as a family practice physician. His career was cut short when at the age of 38 he suffered a debilitating stroke, leaving him with right-sided paralysis and global expressive aphasia, which prevented him from speaking or writing.
As part of his stroke-recovery therapy, Gary had to learn to hold a pencil in his left hand. Frustratingly, he could not form words with the pencil, but he started sketching flowers from Gabrielle’s garden. With colored pencils, he began perfecting his compositions of lilies, peonies, irises, and birds of paradise. He developed his own language of design as his art evolved from simple monotone sketches to meticulous and brilliantly colorful composition. Mandalas, human figures, insects, and architecture feature in many of his works, but the full moon is the most pervasive element in his artistic lexicon, as if to mark not only the brief moment of spectacular beauty but also each composition’s place in the cosmos.
This summer the first posthumous retrospective exhibition of Gary’s work appeared alongside their son Christopher’s in Lines & Layers: The Art of Gary Bachers & Christopher Bachers at the South Arkansas Arts Center in El Dorado, Arkansas. It closes September 5.
It’s the first posthumous retrospective exhibition of Gary Bachers’ work since he passed away. Gathering Gary’s body of work for this first exhibition through the grief was hard, Gabrielle says, but with the tears, there was joy, and especially heartwarming that it is a father and son exhibition.
“This exhibit is partly a retrospective of his work. It’s also the first time that collections of Christopher and Gary were exhibited together, something Gary had so looked forward to.
“Putting this show together was bitter sweet. He left an incredible gift of art behind and it is sad to accept that there will be no more. I am so privileged to have walked this journey by his side. He inspired so many people along the way and I want to continue that by sharing his work.”
Find Gabrielle at Cottonwood Art Festival on October 5-6 and in Edom on October 12-13. Check garybachers.com for more upcoming shows.