Bryan and I are excited to share the Art in Embassies exhibition we have curated for our time here at Whitlock Hall in Brussels. These works reflect my deep appreciation for our Nation’s heroes and their families, and my home state of New York. We are also grateful for the opportunity to include four artists who are dear friends in our exhibition.
Whitlock Hall is a gorgeous historic residence with high ceilings and formal interiors. It was important to us to select art that complements the interiors of the Residence rather than competes with it. We hope you enjoy the exhibition, and we thank you for taking the time to experience it. We are honored to have you here and grateful to our friends at Art in Embassies for their help in bringing this beautiful exhibition together.
Ambassador Bill White
Brussels, Belgium
Cynthia Bickley-Green’s paintings are abstract with curvilinear shapes and vibrant tones. Part of a group of Washington, D.C.,-based artists from the Washington Color School active during the 1960s and 1970s, her work emphasizes color rather than structure. She is currently a professor at East Carolina University, Greenville, where her research and publications investigate the biology of art, the interplay between visual media and pedagogy, and the development of social identities.
Bickley-Green earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a doctoral degree in art from the University of Georgia, Athens. She was a member of the steering committee for the first National Conference for Women in the Visual Arts held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Her work has been shown in exhibitions across the United States.
Kristin Cronic is a Florida-based artist and military veteran whose work draws on her experience in the United States Navy. In Morning Colors, she depicts the Navy’s morning ritual of raising the national flag to mark the beginning of the day and honor the sacrifices of service members. Cronic describes her work as “a quiet rebellion against modern noise, returning to slowness and tactile wonder of my own humanity. The work invites viewers to recognize within themselves the same power, resounding tenderness, and magnificent interconnected nature of human existence… and to wholly embrace what is already holy in each of us.”
After accepting an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, Cronic was commissioned as an Ensign and continued to paint between deployments and duty assignments, later retiring to pursue art full time. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in visual art from Jacksonville University, Florida, where she teaches as a drawing professor. Her work has been exhibited at the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, Columbus, Ohio; the U.S. Pentagon, Washington, D.C.; and the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland.
Self-taught artist Gene Davis was a central figure in the Washington Color School and is best known for his vertical stripe paintings, though he also worked in collage and silhouette self-portraits. Working with acrylic on canvas, he developed compositions of precisely calibrated bands of color that emphasize rhythm, optical variation, and chromatic interaction.
Davis often compared his painting process to jazz improvisation, describing it as “playing by eye.” He said, “Instead of simply glancing at the work, [I] select a specific color—and take the time to see how it operates across the painting. Enter the painting through the door of a single color, and then you can understand what my painting is all about.”
A lifelong resident of Washington, D.C., Davis helped establish the city as a center of contemporary art. Before turning to painting full time, he worked as a sportswriter and White House correspondent. His work is in several museum collections, notably the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Self-taught artist Deirdre Imus resumed painting following the 2019 death of her husband, Don Imus, a radio personality and television show host. In 2021, she developed a technique called “stranding,” or “strand of emotion painting,” through which she emphasizes gestures and abstraction over literal representation. Like Mystic of the American West, the horse functions less as a descriptive subject than as a vehicle for emotional expression. Imus has said, “I’m not interested in painting the horse as it actually appears. I’m merely painting the attitude, emotion, remnant.”
In addition to her artistic career, she is an author, health advocate, and philanthropist. Imus’s paintings are featured in Courtney Collins Fine Art, Big Sky, Montana, and the Schoonover Gallery Fine Art, Steamboat Springs, Colorado, among other venues.
Régine Mahaux is a Belgium-based film director and photographer whose work spans portraiture, fashion, and fine art photography. Drawn to subjects in positions of public visibility and influence, she has photographed prominent political leaders, business figures, and members of royal families. Mahaux describes her approach as a “unique and grandiose creative style” that seeks to “effortlessly translate the personalities of her models with efficacy.” In particular, she was commissioned to photograph First Lady Melania Trump for the 2017 and 2025 presidential inaugurations. Her work has been presented at the Cannes Film Festival and earned the Kodak award. Public collections of her work include the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, both in Washington, D.C., and the Musée Art & Histoire and Belfius Art Gallery, both in Belgium.
Exploring form, material, and scale, Jonathan Prince’s steel and granite sculptures reflect his interest in science, spirituality, and technology. Part of The Liquid State series, Apparition investigates the relationship between geometry, materiality, and perception, in which light serves as a fluid agent and a “transformative substance capable of reconfiguring both form and perception.” Polished metal surfaces curve and refract their surroundings, softening rigid forms and creating shifting visual effects that alter the viewer’s experience of solidity and space.
At age twelve, Prince apprenticed with the French American cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz. After working as a maxillofacial surgeon, film producer, and then founder and chairman of a media technology company, he returned to sculpture in 2002 and established an art fabrication facility in the Berkshires. His work is included in numerous institutions, such as the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, East Lansing, and the Nader Sculpture Park, Miami.
An artist for more than 50 years, Philip Trager is a photographer best known for architecture, dancers in outdoor settings, and portraiture. His iconic portraits of buildings—particularly of New York City as seen in From 346 Broadway—are regarded as “landmarks in architectural photography.” A review from the New York Journal of Books summarized his oeuvre best: “[with] dramatic expanses of empty streets and towering skyscrapers that imbue the city with a quiet elegance…[Trager’s] portrayal is of a city that commands attention with its imposing magnificence and inspires with its grandeur.”
Trager’s photographs have been featured in numerous monographs. His work is held in several public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; and Bibliothèque Nationale, de France, Paris.
Active as an artist since 1987, Peter Tunney specializes in text-based imagery structured around bold, declarative phrases. He creates in almost every medium: paint, collage, wood, photography, found objects, and discarded materials. FEAR LESS is part of a series of works featuring large-scale typographic assertions and is among the images that Tunney has installed as temporary billboards throughout New York City.
He has maintained gallery spaces in lower Manhattan for over thirty years and operates The Peter Tunney Experience in Miami. His works are in public and private collections worldwide.
