REX HAUSMANN

Palm Beach | The Colony Hotel | Holiday House

Palm Beach. 2024. Wintering in an endless summer. An Old Fashioned with my pop, Prosecco with my mom and society with paintings. 

Two years ago we drove a Texas Ford F250 in Palm Beach down Worth Ave. Now two years later I’d have a painting on that drive. 

I’d say an old fashioned with Elija Craig Bourbon tastes just about the same in Texas as it does in Palm Beach. Both places have plenty of sun. In Palm Beach Good French wine is a plus too, go to a restaurant called Stage in Palm Beach Gardens, they have it in spades and great food. On Tuesdays wine by the bottle is 1/2 off! 

This whole week was a “thing”. My dad always says “The Palm Beach impala equivalent is called a Bentley'' … I thought that was a joke … until it wasn’t. We passed a hotel with a small parking lot in Palm Beach. Each and every car in the parking lot was a supercar, no four wheels under $300,000, I guarantee it. There was a car so shiny and new I didn’t even know what it was. It was all made of fiberglass. The car was FAST. The supercar was like the batmobile had a child with a lemans race car or Lamborghini. The car was jet black. I thought Bruce Wayne was going to step out of it. 

The words WORTH AVE. Aren’t an accident … it almost baffles the mind and should read with a disclaimer label “what is your net worth? And can and should you be here? This is after all Billionaires Rowe.” 

It’s not what you think it is though. It’s all so casual, so unassuming… so, surprisingly inviting and small even though there are hedgerows all over like in The Hamptons. It’s beach time in 1961 but in 2024 with flamingos and drinks with little umbrellas. You know … a kind of I Love Lucy episode intertwined with Sophia Lauren saying “… simply fabulous dahling … simply fabulous!” … and it’s true. Palm Beach IS simply fabulous …and pink … everywhere and in every shade of pink one can imagine … on everything … Again, tiny umbrellas with sea side drinks come to mind. 

We are after all “in season”! 

We Finished a fundraiser at The Colony Hotel called Holiday House curated out of East Hampton and NYC. A fundraiser for breast cancer. The event is run by a lady named Iris Dankner. The curator of the area I was in, Mago, who I met in the Hamptons with Lucy. We in the Hamptons as a family were house guests of Lucy. I met Mago briefly and we kept in touch. He put my work in a show with artists predominantly out of Sag Harbor and East Hampton. The painting  out of my studio in Texas was a giant 72” x 72” painting for my father called “Gone Fishin (a painting for my father)”(2024). 

For me all good painting comes from memory & a lot of photos. One I’m particularly fond of, a photo my mother took of a sunset right across from the home I live in on the Ranchita in Texas. Of course the photo is over water as my father loves water and fishing. He grew up on water. He can’t get away from it. 

The show in Palm Beach was a hit. My mom and dad were there and it’s one of those moments you just sit back and enjoy the glow. Everyone and I do mean everyone was from some other place. The event was PACKED. 

The event had sold out way before the event started. People flew in from Sag Harbor. East Hampton. Greenwich. New York City. Flowers were abounding. Tropical paradise. Fru fru drinks with the pinky out kind of shwag. As the art critic David Hickey once said “graduating from groceries to cocktails” this phrase sure was a proverb, especially here. 

Society, designers, artists, editors. Pre partys and VIP parties. The whole nine yards. It was like a mini Art Basel Miami Beach in Palm Beach or “The Island'' as the locals call it. After the party the work was then taken to the gallery Chase Edwards and hung for a week. We went to some parties in obscure wear houses, I actually met 3 native Floridians. At these functions it seems like everyone is from somewhere else. All of the Floridians wore black to an all pink party. It was a riot “I didn’t get the memo” Gina said, as did Lauren. I laughed as I was in a 3 piece bespoke blue suit from Limatus Bespoke out of San Antonio with a pink polo oxford shirt from Dillards. It worked. My mother said “honey I can’t do the hot pink thing”, she wore fashionable white, black and blue. My father  white shirt with a black blazer. We represented Texas well. We all wore small pink lapel robins. Even my mom’s dog Dorrie Tina wore a pink ribbon. 

At The Colony pink flamingos were everywhere. Kipling monkeys driving Bentleys and the whole nine yards THAT is the Colony Hotel. Bentleys … so many Bentleys of every make and model. It’s astounding. Remember my dad’s Palm Beach Chevy impala joke. It was no joke tonight. Everyone was glammed out. I broke off during the party and looked for some takeaways for my mom & dad. I tried to buy my mother a set of slippers from the gift shop  … $650 easy. I opted for a hat and a coffee coaster from the front register. I wanted to get my dad a tie, wanting to remember this moment. The day before I had sat next to Iris and her sister at a function. The two sisters were great. They reminded me of myself and my brother. One sister is an artist, the other a scientist. I said “my brother and I are 11 months apart … we’re like twins.” 

 I think a Yorkshire terrier on loan comes comped with each room at a the Colony Hotel that and a set of white sunglasses that Audrey Hepburn or the

model Twiggy once wore. At the end of each night I enjoyed an Elija Craig old-fashioned with my father. Apparently the old fashioned is the first cocktail, my mother prosecco. Like Hickey said “groceries to cocktails.” Let me tell you, sometimes the view is just good. 

We ended the week of dinners, parties and cocktail mixers with my cousin Nathan, a dentist in Fort Lauderdale eating pizza and salad from a place we love in Wellington, Basilicos in Kabasko Square. It’s a simple place with great pizza and salads, eggplant parmigiana and pasta. I knew André Leon Talley. The Vogue editor loved to eat at a little dinner. I think he’d love this place, I think Anthony Bourdain would have liked it too. We ate there three times in 9 days. There I presented to my cousin a “Calimocho '', a drink we picked up in Basque Country last year in Spain. Equal parts red wine and coke a cola with a wedge of lemon on ice. Perfect with pizza.  

This was a show to remember. 

Cheers from Palm Beach 

“Gone Fishin (A Painting for My Father)” 

Rex Hausmann (2024) | 72” x 72” | Acrylic on canvas with French paint

The Colony Hotel | Holiday House 2024 | Curated out of East Hampton & NYC. 

Palm Beach, Florida 

*Thanks Mago & Lucy. 

A painting to honor my dad, Gene Hausmann who loves to fish. Most of my work comes from memory. Meaning, memories (good and bad) and the rationale of the world in which you find yourself. This work “Gone Fishin” has a direct link to my father and times fishing with my brother and nephews in Florida and Texas. The process is not only timeless, it’s wonderful, full of memory and colors. The painting is sourced from photographs taken by my mother of many Texas and Florida sunsets both from our family Ranchita (yes, our family lives with horses) and our home in Wellington where my mother rides daily and my father fishes daily. The title comes from the old tune from Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong “Gone Fishin”.

ARTIST STATEMENT

For me, painting is the purest form of problem solving. I communicate through drawing and painting and sometimes words which I like to have fun with. Art and life become one in my images, and I have two overriding interests: painting and people. My goal is to relate with people, their daily lives, their actions and their stories as they are. I am most inspired by Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Akira Kurosawa, George Melies, Antoni Gaudi and Daniel Buren. These literary, cinematic and visual artists are all storytellers. In my world, they would be eating donuts and sipping coffee on a New York fire escape. The subjects of discussion would be their favorite books, films, and museum pieces. These conversations are the basis of my art—the synthesis of art and life. My art is colorful, accessible and autobiographical.

BIO

Contemporary artist Rex Hausmann is a San Antonian, who started his art education at UTSA graduating from Savannah College of Art and Design on scholarship with a BFA in painting (2006) and an MFA in painting (2016).  His artist philosophy remains simple “Grow Where You Are Planted” displayed behind Phebe, the bougainvillea, on the front his family buildings at The Hausmann Millworks: A Creative Community in downtown San Antonio. Rex has shown and lectured nationally and internationally, appearing in many speaking functions including TEDx San Antonio at Trinity University , McNay Museum of Art, The San Antonio Museum of Art, and The University of Texas at San Antonio as well as The Spencer Museum of Art. He has shown work at The Smithsonian in Washington DC, The Institute of Texan Cultures, Neiman Marcus, The Lawrence Art Center and The Cloister at Sea Island Resort.   He has spoken on National Public Radio many times across the United States.   His home base remains in San Antonio, Texas at The Hausmann Millworks: A Creative Community.