NEW ORLEANS - Heriard-Cimino Gallery presents Hours and Seasons, A New Ragamala, an exhibition of gouache and watercolor paintings by James McGarrell. The exhibition will be on view from May 2 through June 2, 2009. A reception will be held on Saturday, May 2, from 6 until 8 p.m. The public is invited. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 - 5:00, or by appointment.

Ragamala literally means "A Garland of Melodies." Ragamala paintings, originating in late 16th Century India, are a visual expression of the Raga, which is a combination of notes and frequencies forming melodic movements conjuring sensation and mood relevant to India's six seasons of the year and times of day.

James McGarrell began his first Ragamala in 2007, as a guest of the Indian Council on Cultural Relations at the Sanskriti Foundation on the outskirts of Delhi. The exhibition here in New Orleans will be presenting James McGarrell's second Ragamala suite.

In James McGarrell's words - I am fully aware that I am an American painter working now in the 21st century, not an Indian one of the 18th. And yet these wonderful gifts have come to me from another land and distant eyes and hands. From the classical cycles of the ragamala traditions in music and painting I have also been able to draw nourishing details of time of day, seasons of the year, circumstances of weather and geography as well as emotional passions. These are universal phenomena common to life everywhere on our planet yet pungently local when discovered in particular art evocations. I hope that my experience of India during those visits, in contemplation of its great painting and music, will bear a bit of witness to that common life.

The work of James McGarrell has been included in five Whitney Museum Annuals and Biennials, two Carnegie Int'l Exhibitions, Documenta in Kassel, Germany and the 1968 Venice Biennale. His paintings are included in permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Chicago Art Institute, and New Orleans Museum of Art. In 1995 McGarrell received the Jimmy Ernst Award for lifetime achievement from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2008 he was awarded The Oscar Williams and Gene Derwood Prize in visual arts from the New York Community Trust.