![]() ![]() Joe Lugara’s paintings and photographic works have appeared in more than 40 exhibitions in museums and galleries in the New York Metropolitan Area and published in numerous magazines, including cover art for the literary journals The MacGuffin, Your Impossible Voice, Pithead Chapel, Right-Hand Pointing and Gone Lawn. The small scale of the paintings should emphasize the sense and intensity of observation.” They should seem alien and yet distantly familiar, activating our imaginations as to what nature means to us. My purpose is to produce shapes that vaguely suggest natural forms and phenomena. I wouldn’t be working abstractly if I were concerned with physical accuracy. “Like the title implies, ‘Scrutiny’ is about observation. I’m more concerned with how we observe nature than I am about depicting nature accurately. The artist describes the project as a nature walk. Primarily finger painted on primed boards, the scratches, nicks, gouges, and pitted surfaces attest to each painting’s own evolution, with the artist’s fingerprints suggesting the impact of human activity. Begun more than a decade ago, the series is still in progress. Its abstract shapes allude to landscapes, atmospheric conditions, insects, mud slides, plants, ravines, animals, bones, fossils-things big, small, and possibly microscopic, all living, growing, decaying, regenerating, a continuous movement that’s reflected in the many revisions most of the works have undergone. “Scrutiny” consists of 200-plus watercolor paintings. (MILLVILLE, NJ) - Forty-four paintings from Joe Lugara’s series “Scrutiny” will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Riverfront Renaissance Center for the Arts in Millville from July 21 to September 8, 2023. Joe Lugara, "Scrutiny 1" (Watercolor, 6" x 6")
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |