About
About The Artist
“When it comes to my paintings, It’s all about the light and the high drama that can be created. The early subjects I have chosen to illustrate this dramatic light have been primarily baskets. The light beautifully illuminates the basket, then passes through it to create a never ending array of light-speckled shadows. Even as I expand my subject matter beyond baskets, the drama of the light is still my primary focus.”
Joe graduated with honors from the Art Institute of Boston, and for over 40 years he has been an award-winning graphic designer. “I will probably always be a designer, it’s in my blood.” In 2008 he officially added fine art painter to his title. But he didn’t stop there. A few years after that his design passion kicked in and he also began designing and creating one-of-a-kind art chairs.
About The Art
Joe describes his still life paintings as contemporary realism, and his medium is acrylics on canvas. His paintings are created in a tenebrist style. Both tenebroso (Italian) and its English equivalent, tenebrism, refer to a style of painting characterized by high contrast between light and shade.
Frequently the main subjects of tenebrist paintings are illuminated by a single source of light, as if a spotlight shone upon them, leaving other areas in darkness. In order to achieve this dramatic lighting effect, Joe first paints the canvas dark, and then begins to paint the light areas of his subject, allowing the dark background to become the shadows.
All paintings are created on stretched canvas. The medium is acrylics, and each original is protected with satin archival varnish.
Art Chairs
The design of these one-of-a-kind art chairs begins on paper. The design objective is to create two dimensional shapes that can be replicated to reveal a three dimensional chair. Numerous sketches are created to visualize how each chair would look in three dimensions. Once a design is perfected, Adobe Illustrator software is employed to draw the final refined shapes that make-up each chair. The chairs are designed full size, so most chairs could be manufactured in any variety of materials as a full-sized functional piece of art furniture. In order to produce the small art prototypes, the final digital art files are reduced by one-third and the chair components are laser cut from solid acrylic. After sanding, cleaning and fitting the pieces to confirm that the design worked the way envisioned, the chair is disassemble and each individual segment is painted. After drying, each component is then hand assembled to create the final small unique art chair. The finished chairs generally measure from 9″ to 12″ high.
Limited Edition Prints for Sale
All prints are created from high resolution scans of the original painting. Each print is hand titled, numbered and signed. Prints can be ordered in any size up to the original size of the painting, and are printed using archival inks on acid free archival paper or stretched canvas.