Jimmy Wright (b. 1944, Kentucky, US) is a painter and pastel artist of international note with a career in the arts spanning over fifty years. He received a scholarship to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from which he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1967 and studied with renowned painter Ray Yoshida. The artist then entered the graduate program at SIUC and achieved his master of fine arts degree in 1971. While at SIUC, he was an organiser of the university’s first LGBTQ+ organisation, one of the earliest in the country. In 1974, Wright settled in the Bowery, New York City, just as the punk and gay scenes were reaching an early peak. There, the artist used the vibrant nightlife as a source of inspiration for a series of paintings capturing the libertine atmosphere of the clubs and bathhouses as well as quieter moments between the gay men of the neighbourhood, which Wright observed and then later painted from memory. The arrival of the AIDS epidemic in New York’s gay community in the early 1980s brought an end to the clubs and the lives of many of those associated with them, including several of Wright’s friends.
Wright was named a National Academician of the National Academy of Design (2018) and elected the president of the National Pastel Society (2013), an office he continues to hold. His art resides in the collection of many leading museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as private collections and galleries around the world.
