First, I would like to thank LAL for providing me with this opportunity. It was a rewarding and enriching process to discuss contemporary painting with staff at LAL, and it was perhaps more interesting still to see the emergence and evolution of those ideas in the works submitted. I am grateful for the chance to engage the Lexington community in a discussion of contemporary art, including its unusual manifestations and exciting creations. If there is one defining element of contemporary art, it is that there is no one defining element. Contemporary creative activity is as marked by a plurality of motivations and manifestations as is the world in which it is made. As culture fragments and history accelerates, art brings in an ever-widening group of creators with diverse desires. The mode in which one’s creative work can be engaged by an audience likewise grows ever more varied. Artists can utilize contemporary galleries, such as the Loudoun House, and museums to exhibit their work, but artists are increasingly combining that activity with work that is distributed via the Internet or even in commercial venues that would have been shunned a generation ago. Each of these works and audiences is brought together by the artist’s creative vision. With that context as a backdrop, we identified three threads that may mark an image as responding particularly to our current moment. First, creative work now is frequently quite dense, even decorative. The arrival of hyper-density in contemporary painting could be seen as a response to a hyper-stimulating contemporary world filled with icons and diminutive data points that constantly vie for our attention. In a world of cell phone-controlled and Facebook©-facilitated interaction, is it any wonder that contemporary creative work overflows with small, precise forms? Secondly, empty manmade spaces form a contrasting pole to hyper-decoration. Contemporary painters seem to be drawn to architectural spaces devoid of their creators. In this way, a house or building is rendered not only as information, as a schematic but also as an abstraction of psychological states. If a room doesn’t hold other subjects, perhaps it holds our moods. As the images are freed from people or subjects, our own subjectivity rushes into the space itself to contemplate ourselves. Lastly, figuration has returned to painting in a strong and considerable fashion, but the figures are often strange detours from ordinary representation. We are surrounded by ourselves as celebrities. We are inundated with people who are, in reality, ordinary, but by virtue of mass media, rendered as extraordinary. These ur-people emerge in contemporary painting as superheroes, demigods and cryptozoological oddities. There were a great many excellent works submitted to the show (some 700 paintings from around 100 artists). We could have had three to four shows of work from the submissions and continued with each exhibition to discover new points of interest and excitement. So, narrowing the works down to 50 selections was immensely difficult. I leave you with an invitation to linger over the works in the exhibition. My selections and comments are only the beginning of what the artists on display offer. These humble thoughts only start a conversation, which each work here ably extends in unexpected, enriching and intoxicating directions. I thank LAL and the participating artists for allowing me to join the fun. Bobby Campbell studied art at Transylvania University, where he completed a BA in Philosophy in 1998. Following five years of professional practice as a graphic designer, he entered graduate school at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design. Upon completing his MFA in 2006, Bobby was awarded a Fulbright Student Scholar Grant to study for the 2006-2007 academic year at the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, Ireland. He is in his second year of teaching as an Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Morehead State University where he teaches digital art, painting, graphic design and drawing. Bobby has exhibited art in diverse locations including Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, Beijing and Dublin.