By Betsy DiJulio

When is a review not a review?  When it becomes a conversation about the artwork.

When I arrived at Mayer Fine Art Gallery to review the show, I sat down, powered up my laptop and immediately became engrossed in a conversation with gallery owner and artist, Sheila Giolitti.  So, what follows is, essentially, an interview.

Work by the five main artists in this group show, including Giolitti, are available through her gallery year round:  Michael Fitts, Charlottesville; Christine Harris, Norfolk; Terry Moore Strickland, Birmingham, AL; and Alexey Terenin, Prague, Czech Republic (though he is Russian).

Giolitti describes both Fitts and Strickland as hyper-realists.  Observes Giolitti of Fitts, who paints in oil on found metal sheets, “His technique and his hyper realism draw you in.  I love the fact that he works on a recycled material, but not just any piece of scrap.  A lot of thought goes into marrying the image with the particular piece of metal to the extent that most people think that the backgrounds are actually painted to look like metal—it’s a holistic approach.”  In this show, Fitts’ imagery includes popcorn spilling from a movie popcorn box; three paper airplanes vertically positioned in a crisp straight horizontal row; and a package of Twinkies, subjects Giolitti calls “pop imagery of American culture, especially of Fitts’s childhood.  Thus, the images are personal, but easy to relate to.”  As an art dealer who is regularly accepted into prestigious international art fairs, Giolitti finds it satisfying to present work with what she describes as “an American flavor.”

Strickland’s work, especially her paintings--though there is one charcoal/pastel drawing in the show—are hybrids of both a contemporary and a Renaissance sensibility.   Says Giolitti, who was schooled abroad as an artist and who is also well-versed in the current art market, “From a traditional fine art point of view, Terry is unsurpassable.  She is very particular about her pigments, brushes and varnishes.  As an academic painter of the human figure, she is one of the finest.”   Her subjects are pleasingly enigmatic: a portrait bust of a woman in a landscape, the sky filled with birds in flight and one yellow bi-wing plane; a three-quarter portrait of a Vegas-style magician and his doves, the hands as beautifully painted as any Old Master in the academic tradition; and, in a synchronistic parallel to Fitts’ paper airplanes, three matches:  unlit, lit and burned out, all against a dark ground.

About her own fairly newly abstract/non-objective mixed-media  work Giolitti says, “In my earlier work, which had to do with memories, feelings and psychology as I reacted to events in m past, I would provide ambiguous, figurative clues.”  For those unfamiliar, these clues took the form of classical references, human figures, writing, and a special predilection for pears, among other things.  She continues, “As I became more and more comfortable with not having to explain myself, I felt I could get rid of those literal, figurative elements, and concentrate more on my personal essence.  Because nature and landscapes are where I feel completely centered and grounded, that’s what I gravitated to in the paintings.  They’re not literal, of course.”  Of her very subjective use of material—oil and acrylic paint, charcoal and more, sandwiched between layers and layers of resins and liquid plastics—she says, “I like the play with the material.  I am completely not in control.”

About Terenin’s enigmatic figures, sometimes bound and often holding a symbolic object, but virtually always inspired by Biblical and/or Russian folkloric traditions, she recalls, “What resonated first and foremost has to be the fact that I don’t think I’m looking at it as objectively as I look at some others.  There was a real personal draw to the work; a lot of it has to do with the fact that I was raised in Italy; it was like coming home.  It had an intimate quality because of my childhood.  The surfaces are so nice… All of his characters are extremely complex.  Well-lived souls.   He paints lots of angels and they are real flawed human beings, despite their grace. The work is very layered with meaning.  It retains its mystery and a lot of art doesn’t.  And if it doesn’t, it becomes tired and old.”

It is not surprising that sculptor, Christine Harris, who works as an art therapist would create psychologically intriguing characters.  The two richly costumed and dramatically attenuated figures in this show are characterized by symbolic objects like nests, eggs, shells and keys tucked into compartments, themselves metaphors, presumably for interiority.  Says Giolitti, “These are complex characters.  They have a Tim Burton-ish cartoony, but dark, quality.

This show will be on view, in various forms as pieces go in and out, through the second week of October.  I recommend that you find time to visit: visit the show and visit with the gallery owner.  I’ve just scratched the surface here.

Summer Group Show

Through  October 10

Mayer Fine Art Gallery

333 Waterside Drive

Norfolk, VA

757.803.4749

www.mayerfineartgallery.com