Grace DeGennaro
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is an ongoing study of ritual, symmetry, sacred geometry, gnomonic growth, dream theory and how the mysteries of these ancient vocabularies transcend religion and culture. Using repeated iconic forms like the circle and the square in symmetrical compositions, I make paintings and watercolor drawings that offer the viewer access to a sense of time as both ancestral and immediate. I am particularly interested in the shapes that unfold from serial forms such as the vesical piscis, which results from overlapping circles. For centuries, this almond shape has been used as a metaphor for the dualities of life and death, light and dark, alpha and omega. Though precision is a predominant quality of my work, evidence of my hand renders each piece subtly asymmetrical. I embrace these natural variances, even as I seek a wholeness in the finished work. Often, I prepare a layered indigo ground that suggests the power of lapis lazuli, a stone that was thought by medieval alchemists to embody heaven and earth. This deep blue implies a primordial sea of time, as symbolic forms float in synchrony above the dark surface. With intense colors that defy the dark surface, I create an exponentially evolving philosophical geometry. Each of my paintings is offered as both an antidote to the distractions of our everyday world, and as an entrance to the collective unconscious.
Grace DeGennaro was born in Rockville Centre, NY (1956). Her paintings and works on paper have been internationally exhibited at galleries and institutions, including Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME ; Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY; Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY; EFA Project Space, New York, NY; Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY; Schema Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Cove Street Arts, Portland, ME; The Parsonage Gallery, Searsport, ME; The Current, Stowe, VT; United States Embassy, Doha, Qatar and the United States Embassy, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Africa. Her work is included in various permanent institutional and private collections, including the Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY; Smithsonian American Art Archives, Washington DC; Ballinglen Museum of Contemporary Art, County Mayo, Ireland; Wellington Management, Boston, MA and Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA. She is the recipient of grants from the Maine Arts Commission, the New England Foundation for the Arts and a finalist for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting and Sculpture Grant. DeGennaro has completed residencies at The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ireland and The Catwalk Institute. She was a visiting artist at numerous colleges on the east coast, including Bowdoin College, Skidmore College and Colby College. She received an MFA in Painting and Sculpture from Columbia University and a BS in Fine Arts from Skidmore College. DeGennaro lives and works in Yarmouth, Maine.
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