"Junior" 22 x 30" acrylic on paper 2011

"Silent Partner" 22 x 30" acrylic on paper 2011

"Vain Exit" 22"x 30" acrylic/chalk on paper 2011

"Classic Ruin" 22"x 30" acrylic /chalk on paper 2011

"Interior IV" 22"x 30" acrylic on paper 2011

"Interior III" 22"x 30" acrylic on paper 2011

"Interior II" 22"x 30" acrylic on paper 2011

"Interior I" 22"x 30" acrylic on paper 2011

"Light of the Past" 22"x 30" acrylic on paper 2011

"Ideal Ruin" 22"x 30" acrylic on paper 2011

"The End, Sadly" 22"x 30" acrylic on paper 2011

"The End" 22"x 30" acrylic on paper" 2011

"Cinema" 22"x 30" acrylic on paper 2011

"Gather" 22"x30" acrylic on paper 2011

"Swept" 22" x 30" acrylic on paper "Gather" 22"x30" acrylic on paper 2011

2011

Come to the opening on Nov.20 from 2pm on and say hello!

This comment came recently from Silvia Bellia, an Italian author who just recently published her first novel and for whom I was fortunate to provide the bookcover art for (below), she writes :

“I congratulate you on your new paintings and on your exhibition.
I saw your paintings on the internet and I noticed a different style, it reminds me of the cubist movement. In fact, you drew Pablo’s cat (Its Picasso’s, isn’t it?). Do you call your art cubism?
Your figures have a lightness, they make a whole: a narrative scene.
They don’t subdivide the image, but create unity of place.
Even in “Absinthe” I don’t feel the difficulty of recollecting pieces, but the images make me think that there is an inner meaning somewhere in mind, an equilibrium that I don’t know yet, but that I could know.
I like the way you recompose the same objects in other paintings, like the famous paperboat. People can recognize these objects and suppose every painting is an “interior fragment” of your artistic world. Balzac did this too. His characters reappeared many times from novel to novel. So every book was a little fragment of his whole human comedy.
I hope to be inspired from this and write a new story!”

Silvia Bellia

"Inclining Pear" 23"x23" oil on wood 2010

This is a square format oil on wood panel along the theme of a table in a room.  What if everything in the room did not have to obey gravity?   Its not  a perceptually real table or room so the pear could lie on the vertical edge of the table without falling off. Of course it could

"Sao Paolo" 26"x 26" oil on wood 2010

I have given this painting the title “Sao Paolo” because to me the composition has the happy and rythmic feel of a Brazilian Samba. I also think of vinyl record jacket design for some kind of fictitious 60′s jazz ensemble.

"Absinthe" 30"x 40" oil on canvas 2010

“Absinthe” is a memory piece, or more fittingly an inability to recollect piece. The title is a reference to those early 20th century modern paintings of Parisian bars dotted with bottles and glasses by the likes of  Picasso, Leger, Braque. I generally remember them in a kind of hazy past of art history books all sort of blended together like in an obscured mirror ball. Also the bright green rectangle in the center looked to be the color of absinthe. I arrived at the composition by photographing several recent paintings organized in a brick-like arrangement  against the wall. They inadvertently combined to present a reassembled view of the table top theme that I have been working on this year. I cropped the photo and placed it square on a larger white ground,  printing the result and  pinning it to a wall, which was interesting enough but still not quite right until, a couple of days later, I turned it 90 degrees and  the white ground now somehow took on the presence of a room. The white surround gave it an open space dynamic that previous pieces did not have.

"Dream of the Danae" 22"x 30" acrylic on paper 2010

In my composition I have taken from Titian’s painting ” the Danae” in which a Venus/nymph lies naked  on a bed in a tangle of sheets with a cupid figure. The bed is framed by side drapes but located outdoors.  Overhead a storm cloud erupts, showering Venus with  gold flakes. The painting tells the story of the mythical  meeting between Danae and Jove, who, from the heavens above sends down the shower of gold into Danae’s bosom. I read recently that this is an erotic metaphor for Jove’s orgasm. I was shocked! First at the bold erotic meaning and then at my own inability to see it. I had naively thought about Renaissance painting as being mainly about religious  content. Anyway it meant that I had to remake the Titian picture; situating the picture on a beach and substituted the storm cloud with a crashing wave in the top left of the picture. The Venus and cupid become 2 bikini clad girls sunning on the beach. The bed drapery has been turned into a rock face. The rocks work in the same way as the drapery in that it makes the viewer something of a voyeur.