Alberto Rey
https://albertorey.com/bio/
Born in Havana, Cuba in 1960, Alberto Rey received his political asylum through Mexico in 1963 and moved to Miami, Florida in 1965. In 1967, his family relocated to Barnesboro, Pennsylvania. He lived in this small coal-mining town until 1982 when he finished his B.F.A from Indiana University of Pennsylvania after attending the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.
After graduation, he lived in Boston, Massachusetts for a short period before heading to Miami to work on Christo’s Surrounded Islands Project. He then moved to Hollywood, FL and returned north to begin his graduate studies at the University at Buffalo, NY. In 1987, he received his M.F.A. in Painting and began traveling throughout Spain, Italy, Morocco and Mexico. In 1989, he moved to Dunkirk, New York to accept a teaching position at the State University of New York at Fredonia and married Janeil Strong of Gloucester, MA.
His artwork over the past 25 years has been influenced by his Cuban lineage and his attempt to find a sense of identity in a complex contemporary environment. His abstract work from 1982 through 1992 dealt with issues related to layered memories of Cuban iconography and his American experiences. After 1992, his drawings and paintings incorporated realistic imagery as an attempt to make clear connections between his past concerns and art history, regionalism, and his bicultural concerns. Since his relocation to western New York in 1989, he also performed extensive research on local entomology and on the migratory and biological sensibilities of the regional steelhead. In 2000, his reflections on contemporary society started to incorporate environmental issues, perspectives in contemporary art theory and art history, biology and society’s disconnections with nature. At that point, he also began to work in film and video. His research has taken him throughout the United States, Wales, England, Isle de Saintes (Antiqua), Aruba, Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Iceland and Italy.
Alberto’s paintings can be found in over twenty museum collections and have been in over 140 exhibitions. His films/videos have been screened nationally and his illustrated articles and artwork have graced the covers and pages of Gray’s Sporting Journal, Art of Angling Journal, Fish and Fly Magazine, American Angler, Saltwater Fisherman and Buffalo Spree.
Alberto Rey and his family now live in Fredonia where he works in his studio/barn, guides on the steelhead stream behind his home and continues to teach as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Visual Arts and New Media at the State University of New York at Fredonia.
