George Barecca

GEORGE BARECCA has been drawing since kindergarten.  He discovered his palette in college.  His career began with the idea of creating organic abstracts as if illuminated by natural lighting, creating an atmosphere of waking dreams.  His goal is to devise a space within which each viewer could attain a uniquely personal experience.  He decided his best course was to paint from life focusing on various lighting conditions, an approach that also provided an accurate rule against which to measure his progress.  However, the more he worked within the genre the more he became enamored of it.  And so down the rabbit hole he went, bringing with him his abstract compositional approach and mature palette.  He still faced the problem of deciding how to settle his gaze.  Landscape, figurative, still life, wildlife?  They all had something to offer, so he decided on everything being game.  “I can’t seem to help myself,” he mused. “The more I paint from life, the more I find that life is just all over the goddamn place.”  His intentions are not to create perfect representations but to render the ordinary sublime.  To fabricate an experience bending towards dreamscapes.  With a healthy dose of playfulness, steeped in his lush brew of color, this style resonates with his impressions of the world while hinting at something lurking below.  Many of his compositions are built on a matrix of multiples which has had a unifying effect on the diversity of subjects, “The image of multitudes laid across an expansive surface”. It also assists with his conveyance of the idea that underlying all existence is the void.  “A thin veneer of self-generated meaning stretched over an ocean of nothingness.”

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 Each series has been approached as a loosely crafted narrative on the nature of existence. While he continues to “fill in the gaps”, he recently embarked on a new body of work with the intention of integrating his entire oeuvre.  “Building a hand from the fingertips down,” as he puts it.  These new works circle back towards abstraction by focusing more on color and form than subject while retaining vestiges of his representational elements.  Closing the circle, returning to his beginnings, leaning on a lifetime’s experience to finally take a firm grip on his initial intent.

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He continues creating large scale paintings for his existing series and anything else that may catch his attention.  He just can’t seem to help himself.