Born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1934, Darby Bannard earned a BA from Princeton University in 1956. Bannard is among a group of artists, including Larry Poons, Helen Frankenthaler, and Jules Olitski, who contributed to the emergence of Color Field painting in the late 1950s. He is also one of the first artists to use water-based acrylic paints and polymer gels, which he continues to apply to his canvases with industrial squeegees and floor brooms. A prolific painter for over five decades, Bannard has also written regularly for several major art publications, including Artforum, Art in America, and the New York Times. He is represented in public collections in Texas, including the Dallas Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; as well as nationally and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York; as well as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Bannard lives and works in the Miami, Florida, area, where he has served as professor of painting at the University of Miami, Coral Gables.