Anne Finkelstein

Ghost Fence, surrealist hard-edge architectural painting

2022

Roses and Tangerine is from a series of smaller canvases painted for Janet Fish’s 2002 exhibition in New York. The focus of this painting is not so much the objects named by the titl...

Carolanna Parlato is a contemporary artist who has exhibited widely in New York City and throughout the U.S. since the 1990s. Her paintings have been written about in numerous publications including The New York Times, Art in America, The Boston Globe, Artcritical, ArtNews, Two Coats of Paint, The New Criterion, White Hot Magazine and The Brooklyn Rail. Solo exhibitions include the Islip Art Museum; the Phatory (NYC); Elizabeth Harris Gallery (NYC); and Morgan Lehman Gallery (NYC). She has been included in group exhibitions at Asya Geisberg Gallery, The Drawing Center and the Brooklyn Museum, among others. Public collections include the Brooklyn Museum; ArtBank Collection (DC); The Library of Congress (DC); Public Art for Public Schools (NYC); the Francis Greenburger Collection (NYC); the Islip Art Museum, New York Presbyterian Hospital and the Art in Embassies...

"Strengths and Weaknesses" is a portrait exploring several elements and strategies that fascinate the artist – notably the performance anxiety induced by simply being an artist, staring down the freight train of art history as it hurtles toward you every time you pick up a brush. Luck? Talent? Maybe. There are signposts and guides in this painting, of course (Cubism! Surrealism! Brancusi! Guston!), but they can clobber you too if you're not careful. Even the phrase "strengths and weaknesses" smacks of compromises and rationalization – deadly to an artist looking to construct their own integral world. "Strengths and Weaknesses" is an acrylic and charcoal on canvas measuring 54" tall by 54" wide. It was included in the artist's solo show "Comedy Cellar" at Freight + Volume Gallery, New York City in July 2018. (See last photograph for an installation view.) From Daniel Gerwin – "Schenck’s color is vibrant, wild, saturated to the point of overheating, and altogether brilliant in the balancing of hues, temperatures, shapes, and color quantities. The paintings have a remarkable coherence for their dizzying juxtaposition of so many small chromatic passages." (Essay: The Anxiety and the Ecstasy) Peter Schenck...

The act of painting becomes a form of meditation. Marino explains that the time and process of creating work are at the core of what the painting wants to mean, declaring: that is ho...