MEET THE ARTIST

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 emeritus of the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City, 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 an assistant professor at Florida State University, where he taught in the Fine Art department until 1983. For the past thirty-nine years he has worked full-time as a painter, with works purchased for over 10,000 public, private, and corporate collections, including IBM, American Express, Bank of America, HBO, 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 in Chicago at the age of 32. Other One Man shows have followed in Miami, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Naples and Tallahassee. 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 Places competitions, the most prestigious being the von Liebig Art Center in Naples, Florida, and the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. He is also in the Art in Public Places collections for the cities of Miami, Orlando, and Tallahassee. He has participated in over 150 nationally juried Art Shows and is the recipient of more than 20 Art awards. From 1998 through 2021 Geoffrey and his wife Ann owned the Lardiere Gallery & Studio six months of every year in Ephraim, (Door County) Wisconsin, where only his paintings were exclusively represented. The Lardieres live the remaining part of the year at Alligator Point, Florida where Geoffrey maintains 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 eldest 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. Twenty years later Geoffrey, Ann and their New York City based graphic design daughter, Brinley Lardiere, co-founded the Lardiere Collection, continuing the transformation of loss into further authenticity.

Geoffrey Lardiere speaks of his work, “I purposefully lose my power by working spontaneously, without intent, and without a “crystal ball” 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…and not being afraid of the moment. Consequently, this balancing of opposites gives me creativity to fill my “vessels of energy.” In the process I go from powerlessness, in my searching for truth and grace, to the authentic power of my visual prayers.”

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