The Tender Weight

Date: September 4, 2026 - December 24, 2026

Gallery: Douglas Whitley Gallery

This exhibition brings together a group of Black men painters in connection to the Tampa Bay area, each presenting a distinct perspective through the visual language of painting. They wield the weighty inheritance of Western painting to explore themes of family, spirituality, masculinity, joy, grief, memory and more in a range of deeply personal and innovative ways – each piece rewarding a slower, more considered look.

Each artist approaches the medium very differently, but with a shared awareness of the complex history of painting: both as a tool used to reinforce power and its potential as a means to resist it. Within this history, each artist creates space to use the medium as a vehicle for self-definition and expressions unique to one’s own. A space where a vast and often exclusionary art historical tradition is made to speak deeply personal truths, and in turn each artist’s individual experiences speak to a larger shared humanity.

Artists

Jay Coachman
Raheem Fitzgerald
iBOMS
Dallas Jackson
Zulu Painter
Marlon Tobias