About

  The figurative paintings are representations of  beautiful, sensual women who take total pleasure in food, specifically desserts, with no regret or guilt, finding in food  the joys of comfort, satisfaction, and tantalizing sensations.        

 Far too many women today who are obsessed with beauty and body image forget the primal pleasures and how food can comfort the soul.  The women in these paintings fully embrace the pleasures of the moment with no guilt.  They are happy, fulfilled, wonderfully sensual women embracing the delicious gifts of life that go beyond mere sustenance.   They accept and revel in their desire for food, and in their  acceptance abandon themselves to pleasure.  For the viewer, they seem temptresses. There is always an aspect of the Garden of Eden in the paintings.While many foods can be sensual, desserts are an extravagant form of temptation, and the beautiful women in the paintings are unafraid of those temptations.

 In some of the work the atmosphere is straightforward—a woman about to eat or being fed food.  In others, there is a surreal element, dreams of childhood pleasures perpetuated in their adult desire for desserts, as in Proust’s tasting his grandmother’s madeleine.  The desserts engage all their senses and  emotions,  sometimes even when forbidding, which only adds to their appeal.

 I seek to infuse my work with a way of engaging  the viewer with  both evocatively sensual and powerfully commanding paintings in which desire draws on both innocent pleasures and irresistible temptation.

 

 Affiliations

Westchester Photographic Society

Greenwich Art Society

Greenwich Art Council

Education

Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY. BA Russian Studies, Minor in Studio Art

SUNY, Purchase, NY

Studied with artist Enzo Russo in CT

 

Exhibitions

2015  Studio Montclair and Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, Newark NJ -Best in show for Got It

2015  Food For Thought, The Dehn Gallery at MCC, Manchester, CT - Best in show for Got It

2014  Summer ARTiculated, OSilas Gallery, Concordia College, Bronxville, NY

2014  Artist Portfolio Magazine- Northeast vs Southeast issue

2014 The Westchester Biennial 2014, Castle Gallery, New Rochelle, NY,  juror Lisa Cooper of Elisa Contemporary Art Gallery

2013  Figurative Artists listing  http://figurativeartist.org

2013  42 Restaurant in The Ritz-Carlton, White Plains, NY

2013  September 7,  featured in http://artistaday.com/?p=19628 as the artist of the day

2013  Summer ARTiculated,  OSilas Gallery, Concordia College, Bronxville,NY 2013  Picking Up the Pieces,  Flinn Gallery, Greenwich Library, Greenwich, CT            Curator: Laura Phipps, Associate Curator The Whitney Museum of American  Art, NYC

2013  Spectrum 2013 - Carriage Barn Arts Center, New Canaan, CT. Curator and           Juror: Dr. Jill Deupi of Bellarmine Museum of Art at Fairfield University

 2012  Spectrum 2012 - Carriage Barn Arts Center, New Canaan,  CT Juror:C.W. White Gallery

2012  Art In The Country,  Juried Art Show, Easton, CT

2012  95th Annual Greenwich Art Society Bendheim Gallery Show, Greenwich,CT

2012  The Westchester Biennial 2012, Castle Gallery, New Rochelle, NY

2012  "Food For Thought", Summit Medical Group, Berkley Heights, NJ

2012  "Coming Full Circle," digital exhibition, The Bruce Museum, Greenwich,

CT, curator: Anne von Stuelpnagel  

 2011  A Brush with Fate - Flinn Gallery, Greenwich, CT

2010  A Nature Experience - Exhibition at Greenwich Audubon, Greenwich, CT

2010  Juxtopositions - Flinn Gallery, Greenwich, CT

 

 Publications

 May 18, 2012  New York Times, arts Westchester, The Westchester Biennial

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/nyregion/the-westchester-biennial-2012-showcases-new-and-diverse-art.html 

2005 - 2013  Photographs of paintings and photography appear in Mariani's Virtual Gourmet Newsletter