Steve Parton
About
His insightful portraits include those of the journalist, Craig Melvin, his wife, Lindsay Czarniak and their children, Senator John Glenn, and Danial E. Offutt lll. He has won numerous awards for his work, and has been voted Best of the Gold Coast by Greenwich, New Canaan, Darien & Rowaton, Westport & atHome Magazines. He is a Fellow Member of the American Artists Professional League, an Elected Artist Member of the Salmagundi Arts Club, and belongs to Audubon Artists, Allied Artists of America, the Portrait Society of America, and the Artists Collective of Westport. He also teaches art classes at his Westport studio. To learn more about him and his work, please visit www.stevenparton.com.
Artist Statement
I paint in oils in a traditional renaissance manner to give my subjects as much richness as possible. This is an indirect method, building up a monochrome grisaille underpainting over which I gradually add color with both transparent glazes and full bodied color. This is a time consuming and painstaking process. It offers very delicate tonal variations impossible with other painting methods.
Dionne Pia
About
Dionne Pia is a painting and visual artist based in Weston CT. She is an active exhibiting painter and has worked in a variety of professional media that includes photo editing, graphic design, floral design, illustration, and fulfilling fine art commissions. Her artwork has been included in numerous juried and invitational shows in CT and NY, and is represented in private collections throughout the USA. Dionne received a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and spent a year in Rome, Italy attending the European Honors Program. The imagery is a fusion of historic and contemporary culture in an arrangement of unexpected associations and emotions. Underlying themes include grief, loss, protection, hope and even humor.
Artist Statement
“The act of making a painting fuels my curiosity - curiosity is the gateway to empathy. In this digital, heads-down culture all too often people forget about the natural world we share with the plant and animal kingdom. In my work I am deconstructing ideas of human rank superiority and staging a view that includes points of view from other cultures and other beings.”
2017 / Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches $1,800
2017 / Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches $1,800
2017 / Acrylic on canvas 60 x 36 inches $2,500
2017 / Acrylic on canvas 24 x 24 inches $1,200
2016 / Acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches $1,800
2017 / Acrylic on canvas 24 x 24 inches $1,200
Jay Petrow
About
Jay Petrow earned a BA in fine arts from Middlebury College. After graduating, Petrow had a long career as an editorial art director in New York City working for major consumer magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Time and BusinessWeek.
In the last 10 years Petrow has made major changes in his painting approach and his career. He gravitated to painting abstract expressionist works to explore his inner world and his emotional state in dealing with his son’s autism. Studying with abstract painters at Silvermine Arts Center in New Canaan, Petrow’s art has been on view in solo shows at local libraries and represented in group shows at the Westport Arts Center and the Silvermine Arts Center galleries.
Petrow also owns the Westport landscape company, PetrowGardens Landscape Design (www.petrowgardens.com), where he designs absract meadows using native grasses and perennials.
Artist Statement
I began painting in an abstract expressionist style after many years of representational work in order to connect with and express my experience fathering an autistic child. The day to day stresses and struggles to be a good father for my son have at times been overwhelming.
Love, anger, humor, sadness, and loss become an explosive convergence of vivid color and expressive brush stroke. A subconscious level of interaction with my emotions and my spiritual energy informs me as I connect with my inner world and visualize what’s happening on the canvas. I maintain this conversation from within and without throughout the painting process.
The entire body of work approximates a place that I inhabit physically and psychologically. My goal in painting is to recreate on canvas what I am experiencing inside, from high states of agitation and angst to feelings of calm. Incorporating vibrant colors and layering textures on the canvas, I strive to reconstruct a path through my emotional world that produces areas of high kinetic energy and serenity on the canvas.
To view more images please visit www.jaypetrowfineart.com