Artist statement
STARTING OUT
I cannot talk about my artistic process without talking about my father. My father was my teacher. He was a Sicilian American, a published poet and an artist with an aspiring career before he was sent off to WWII. He began teaching me to draw so that by the age of 12, I did portraits for money. In addition to regular time in his studio and galleries, I read from his large book collection - DaVinci, Degas, Renoir, Monet, and Manet among others.
After
graduating with a degree in English from Salve Regina University in Newport,
Rhode Island I continued doing portraiture. However, after arriving in St. Paul from Boston, I began breaking with all traditions that I had grown up with - a Catholic, Italian background rooted in family. Artistically, I began doing more seriously what I had began in my earlier years at Salve Regina University and what some people have called a signature approach to my art. By painting in a gestural style with ink and a #5 sable brush, I was economizing while simplifying and attempting to extract the most emotion from use of the few tools. I did not realize at the time that I was carrying on my father’s tradition of “painting more than the eye can see”. It was at this point that I left portraiture behind and never looked back.
In 2001, I had the opportunity to spend a year on a self-induced “sabbatical” in Boulder, Colorado. At the University of Colorado/Boulder, I audited 8 art classes for a year surrounded by a dedicated group of faculty and students. Within 3 weeks of my arrival, I was asked to participate with 8 graduate students in a Response to 911 at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.
It was there that I departed from my traditional ink and brush to venture into color. In class using the printing press, and a variety of techniques involving the computer, photoshop, chine colle and paint, I experimented in ways that have influenced my work to this day. I found myself once again transformed by my environment and was hungry for more. Although, my drawing had always been strong, color combined with more process and technique opened up new doors. But there was more, I started to think conceptually. It would take me several more years to begin to put into words what began as a distinctively intuitive process. It has taken me more years to understand the maturation process of my art, its journey and its transformation which obviously coincides with my own.
|
