Ron Buffington teaches painting, drawing, and critical theory at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he also serves as head of the Department of Art. He received his MFA from the School of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. He has exhibited his paintings internationally, including in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Lahti, Finland. Among numerous awards, he received an Individual Artist Grant from Allied Arts of Greater Chattanooga, a residency at Yaddo, and a University of Tennessee National Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Teaching.

I am preoccupied with the liminal space of painting, in the features painting claims as its own but equally in those that painting disavows; in painting’s intimates as well as its outcasts; in the manner in which painting guards its boundaries as well as the means by which it marks itself away from its “other.” By exploring the historical literature of Modernism and interrogating romantic notions of authenticity and immediacy, my work reveals the expressive potential of mediation and celebrates the agency of the coded form.