Artist's Statement
STATEMENT:
The birds-eye perspective, silhouettes, and surface patterns have been effective ways for me to explore archetypal and mythic themes in my art. Of all the methods available, I have found the timeless process of painting in oil the most gratifying yet challenging.
Oil painting takes time. Time is essential. Similar to the way a long exposure photo collects light data, crafting a painting yields a similar but richer artifact. Planning, laboring, and experimenting, with luminescent pigments and mediums, results in an object with primal magic. It is more than an image. Its physicality defies the counterfeit "tech-savvy pulp" we are frequently bombarded with.
Each painting is an interplay of thought, materials, and subliminal content. The process is meditation. A juggling of past, present, and future within the "self-conversations" navigating composition and empathy. A slow and sometimes tedious medium leading to an artifact anchored in physicality and thought.
DOT PAINTINGS:
Domenico's latest series of paintings is a departure from his more figurative and portrait based work. The recent “dot paintings” are created with a multi-layered technique. Paint is made “from scratch” using special pigments collected from all over the world. After the pigment is mulled with binders to form paint it is applied in translucent layers. These layers are manipulated in several ways; pressing “patterned forms”, direct brushwork, splattering, glazing and other ways of applying (and removing) paint. The result is a luminescent surface that seems to change and is evasive to all forms of digital reproduced. Domenico has likened this process of creating (and viewing) this series as a form of meditation in that a person has to be present to actually experience the full effect of work.
The birds-eye perspective, silhouettes, and surface patterns have been effective ways for me to explore archetypal and mythic themes in my art. Of all the methods available, I have found the timeless process of painting in oil the most gratifying yet challenging.
Oil painting takes time. Time is essential. Similar to the way a long exposure photo collects light data, crafting a painting yields a similar but richer artifact. Planning, laboring, and experimenting, with luminescent pigments and mediums, results in an object with primal magic. It is more than an image. Its physicality defies the counterfeit "tech-savvy pulp" we are frequently bombarded with.
Each painting is an interplay of thought, materials, and subliminal content. The process is meditation. A juggling of past, present, and future within the "self-conversations" navigating composition and empathy. A slow and sometimes tedious medium leading to an artifact anchored in physicality and thought.
DOT PAINTINGS:
Domenico's latest series of paintings is a departure from his more figurative and portrait based work. The recent “dot paintings” are created with a multi-layered technique. Paint is made “from scratch” using special pigments collected from all over the world. After the pigment is mulled with binders to form paint it is applied in translucent layers. These layers are manipulated in several ways; pressing “patterned forms”, direct brushwork, splattering, glazing and other ways of applying (and removing) paint. The result is a luminescent surface that seems to change and is evasive to all forms of digital reproduced. Domenico has likened this process of creating (and viewing) this series as a form of meditation in that a person has to be present to actually experience the full effect of work.
January, 2023
All content herein, unless otherwise stated, is property of Domenico Petrillo
Copyright © 1976 to present, Domenico Petrillo
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 1976 to present, Domenico Petrillo
All Rights Reserved