|
context |
|
I paint landscapes, cityscapes, sports and portraits both from life and from my photographs.
Painting from photographs taken by the artist is a tradition dating back at least to Degas in the late nineteenth century. Painting landscape dates in the west to at least the thirteenth century when it was used as background for Religious subjects. In the East landscape is an identifiable genre as early as the seventh century Tang Dynasty of China. Painting directly from life goes back to the Egyptian Empire roughly six thousand years ago and painting stylized representations of the natural world from a source other than life or photograph dates back forty thousand years to the known beginning of the visual arts and the cave paintings at Lascaux, Altimira and Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc.
My landscapes city street scenes portraits and sports images are painted with fairly vivid color, (I paint with a palette of fourteen shades of the primary colors - red, yellow and blue - plus burnt umber and one shade of green, infrequently and white. I mix these colors under the brush on the canvas by overlay and juxtaposition, brushstrokes usually oriented from upper right to lower left )in a fairly expressive style. As such my work may invite comparison with - the American Impressionists (1890’s - 1910’s and 1950’s through the present) or the Fauves (French 1905 - 1907 though my colors are not nearly as brilliant as the Fauves) “the Society of Six” also known as the California Colorists (1917 - 1932) or the French Impressionists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
My use of images as metaphor may invite comparison with the American Expressionists (1920’s - 1940’s or 50’s) or the French and Belgian Symbolists of the late nineteenth century, though I am aware of no instance in which they - or anyone else for that matter - used landscape as metaphor for current events or emotions as I do in for example “Solace” (c. 2002 & 2004), “Combat or Statesmanship the Longview” (c. 2004), “Four Lanes and a Strip Mall” (c. 2007), “Virginia Tech Massacre” (c. 2007) and “What if you Lived in Baghdad?” (c. 2005).
The Moody quality in much of my work may invite comparison with the Tonalists (American 1880 - 1915).
Compositionally my work is linked less to traditional painting and more to modern photography and the “Swiss and “Philadelphia” schools of graphic design where I received my formal education, their theories of composition stem directly from “the Bauhaus” (German, 1919 - 1933).
In point of fact I have never sought to imitate any of these movements their artists or schools of thought. I paint the way I do because it works for me.
As an investment my work has enjoyed broad popular appeal though it is linked to no contemporary academic thesis of which I am aware and is rejected by all mainstream critics, curators and dealers, indicating that my work may give form to common experience and emotion in a way that mainstream contemporary art does not.
My work has been selected by six US Ambassadors to hang in our embassies abroad and I have been the subject of one minor museum exhibition and included in another as part of a group.
Financially my work has appreciated six hundred percent since I sold my first piece (a commission for a dog’s portrait in pastel measuring eighteen by thirty-six inches) in about nineteen eighty-three for three hundred dollars. Most recently nearly all of my en plein air work that has appeared at auction has sold and my work is included in numerous private collections.
Henceforth I will continue to paint what interests me both from life and from my photographs, striving to make the work as expressive and uncontrived as possible. If I am lucky I will continue to create work that most people connect with and be afforded the opportunity to continue to live and work as a painter. My objective is to be the best I can and disseminate the works as widely as possible.
Bruce Iacono 02.08 |
