Sargent’s Daughters is presenting ‘Overture’, the first New York solo exhibition of painter Cy Gavin. The exhibition is comprised of a series of twelve mixed-media paintings and will be open through August 21st, 2015. In his debut exhibit, Gavin tackles a wide range of topics and influences- from the writings of W.E.B Du Bois to West African objects to his complex relationships with his family and his past. Gavin’s sexual orientation and artistic interests were an anathema to his Jehovah’s Witness family and his race set him apart in his rural hometown, making him an outsider even inside his own home. The sudden death of Gavin’s father, after a consistently bellicose relationship, caused Gavin to examine his family history and lack of documentation of his ancestry. His desire to depict his father and his relationship with him became a way to construct a past that only partially existed, just as the nebulous

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