

Today we’d like to introduce you to Grace DeGennaro.
Grace, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Growing up I read and reread Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a collection of Greek Myths and a Picture Bible. A long-standing interest in images and metaphor stems from this formative reading. Entering Skidmore College as an English major I enrolled in a drawing class in the second semester and was hooked. Drawing was like reading, it had the ability to lift me out of myself for hours. I loved the materials, the way they felt and smelled. Entering graduate school at Columbia University my goal was to become an abstract painter. I culled images from literature and dreams for personal content for my paintings. I have now kept a dream journal for 37 years.
After relocating to Maine from New York with my husband and two young sons I became increasingly attuned to the night sky. The color indigo is the ground color for many of my paintings and works on paper. Grids of black and white engravings in a 19th century family dictionary became an important source. Initially I juxtaposed both natural and geometric forms to communicate the idea of duality. For the last 12 years a limited vocabulary of only resonant geometric forms has been the subject of my paintings and drawings.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I make oil paintings and watercolor drawings using symbolic compositions and a generative process. My work utilizes a limited vocabulary of archetypal forms and the deliberate repetition and accretion of dots and beads, often using the Fibonacci sequence, to plot patterns marking the natural processes of growth and time. My goal is to bridge Eastern and Western thought through geometry and color to make visible the universal themes of ritual, growth and the passage of time.
Do current events, local or global, affect your work and what you are focused on?
No. The role of an artist and art has always been for me connected to the idea of the sacred. My work is offered as both an antidote to the distractions of our everyday world, and as an entrance to the collective unconscious.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
My work can be seen on display from September 15th – November 3rd in a group exhibition entitled Heaven and Earth at Drive-By Projects in Watertown, MA.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gracedegennaro.com
- Email: gracedegennaro@gmail.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/gracedegennaro/?hl=en
Image Credit:
Luc Demers
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