Constantine Lindsay will be showing my London plein air sketches as well as larger Italian paintings at his stand at Art London from the 6th to the 10th of October. The show is at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, SW3, London. You can download a pdf copy of the brochure for the show by clicking here.
I’m off for New York for my solo show at the Grenning Gallery which opens on August 6th. You can download a copy of the catalog here.
I also have recent paintings at Carteret Contemporary Art and Vision Gallery in North Carolina.
While in the US, I’ll be teaching a four day plain air workshop at the Hamptons Studio of Fine Art in Sag Harbor, NY from July 25th to the 29th.
In August I have a couple of portrait commissions in Italy and France.
Then in September Daniela Astone and I will be doing two plein air workshops in Tuscany. The second one in Baratti still has spaces available. More information on my courses page.
A couple of my paintings are in an auction of fine American paintings at Christie’s in March in New York.
You can place your bid at their website here.
I meant to take a beautiful picture of our immaculately clean studio but never got around to it. Anyways, the details are thus: Open Studio at our gorgeous 19th century painting studio in Piazza Donatello (number 31) this Friday (the 26th) from 6pm onwards. Lots of new work on show this time.
Hope you can make it.
Update: Here’s a short time-lapse of the evening. I’m too lazy to run around with a camera all night.
Studio 31 Open Studio from Marc Dalessio on Vimeo.
My solo show in Sag Harbor (has now closed) at the Grenning Gallery. It was a show of mostly smaller works from the last year and a half, as well as some of the larger plein air paintings from Montefalco this summer.
You can see some of the work on the preview page of their website.
My self portrait from this January (you can see it in this post) is in the Eleanor Ettinger Gallery’s Self Portrait Exhibition which opened last night in New York. It looks like a great show and I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the opening. Paul Oxborough’s portrait on the Ettinger website looks especially brilliant.
I’ll be having another exhibition for charity next week at the Osteria di Santo Spirito. The paintings are all sketches from this winter painted in the Oltrarno of Florence and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Amici di Santo Spirito association. The opening reception will be on Thursday, February 25th from 6 to 9 pm. You can see some of the work here.
A Pokot Hut. 25 cm x 30 cm, oil on linen.
I have a couple of small pieces in a charity show in London called ‘Artists for Africa’. The exhibition opens on the 23rd of February at the Oakham Gallery in St. Jame’s (27 Bury Street, London SW1). For more information on the Friends of Africa charity, visit their website. The reception is on the 23rd from 6:30 to 8 pm (I won’t be making it though, too much work here at the moment).
The Contemporary Florentine Realism exhibition received some criticism for the title. Some of the participating painters objected to the term ‘realism’ and on the Rational Painting forums the title sparked a thread questioning the need to use the word ‘contemporary’. Granted I did not spend a great deal of time thinking of the name. I just needed to come up with an all-inclusive title to describe what we do in the least offensive manner to all parties. Sometimes talking with other realists reminds me of what some wise man once said: ‘there is no greater cause for ferocious argument than a subtle difference between two abstract ideas’ (along those lines anyways, I can’t find the quote).
Most art movements were given their appellations long after the fact but in today’s soundbite-driven world, we should probably have a catchy name. Its interesting to think that some art movement names were originally insults, such as Baroque, Macchiaoli or Fauvism. Odd Nerdrum has been going for this approach by adopting ‘Kitsch’ to describe his painting, you can read his ideas on the subject on his website.
When I was studying, Classical Realism was the blanket denomination for traditional painting. It always seemed too ivory-tower to me, however, as many of my favorite artists are painting very modern subjects albeit with traditional methods and much of the plein air work I admire has nothing really ‘classical’ about it.
‘Slow Art Florence’ was an early choice for the show’s title, especially as the Slow Food movement it pilfers the name from is very popular here. Greg Hedberg has already used ‘Slow Painting’ for his show at the Oglethorpe University Museum in 2006 (Aristos had an interesting critique of the name here). Though it’s a good idea, a quick google search for ‘Slow Art’ turns up a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with this show, and I paint pretty fast anyways.
Two of the best ideas for a title were from the Rational Painting forums. The first was Graydon Parish‘s ‘Post-Contemporary’ art, since the word has already been corrupted to mean a style and not a time. The other was Mark Diederichsen‘s ‘Reconstructionism’, a play on Derrida’s Deconstructionism which has influenced so much of Postmodernism. Unfortunately, once again, a quick browse through google turns up exhibitions of Post-Contemporary art (which appear to just be more of the same), and Reconstructionism is already a hard-core Christian movement advocating a return to Mosaic law.
Back to the drawing board. If anyone has suggestions, post them in the comments please.
Update: For the time being I’m using ‘Post-contemporary’ for the show title on the door, I find it too amusing to pass on.
Mia Madre by Elena Arcangeli.
Tomorrow is the vernissage for the first show I’ve ever ‘curated’ (I actually chose the artists, but not necessarily the pieces). There is a lot of excellent work on display from the teachers and alumni of the three traditional painting schools here: The Angel Academy of Art, Charles H. Cecil Studios, and the Florence Academy of Art.
The opening will be from 6 to 8pm at the Cami Gallery so if you’re in the neighborhood please stop by. The address is via della Condotta 36r:
Here are some images from the show:
Update: Here is a very short time-lapse film of the evening, you can use pause to see frames individually (sorry for the lazy photography, but I didn’t want to run around with a camera all night).
