Fun in the Sun

R. Alexander presents Fun in the Sun, the upcoming group exhibition celebrating summer and the outdoors. The show will be on display at R. Alexander from August 6- September 15, 2018. Come see the sculpture garden as well!

Pietro Piccoli was born in a small town in central Italy. He honed his artistic skills at an early age and pursued a formal artistic career in Rome, an epicenter of creative energy in the 1970s. After exposure to various art, artists, and travels, Piccoli transitioned into an experimental phase in his art and explored the geometric abstractions of landscape, seascapes, and still lifes. Influences of Impressionism, Expressionism, and Fauvism aided him in the definition of his artistic vision. Today, his artwork focuses on bright colors, theatrical lighting, and geometric forms in order to represent views of Mediterranean culture.

Harmonizing with Piccoli’s stylized seascapes, Spanish artist Marc Esteve showcases the dramatic coasts of the Mediterranean. His paintings energize viewers with depictions of waves dramatically crashing into rocky coasts and jagged seashores. His hyper-realist technique achieves a nearly photographic level in naturalism which transports his audience across place and time.

Iban Navarro shares Esteve’s commitment to hyperrealism. To achieve a better consistency for his lifelike paintings of sunbathers and Mediterreanean coasts he mixes watercolors with other substances including acrylics and oil. His photorealistic compositions are completed with egg tempera and watercolor on paper, a method of combining watercolor with egg yolk and occasionally adding oil pastel. He works with materials that painters used over five hundred years ago, and although this is an ancient technique, few artists have mastered the unforgiving nature of tempera as it dries within seconds of its application to the paper. Prior to each painting Iban completes an egg wash over the paper and makes his own watercolors. With these assets and a careful, perfectionist drawing technique, Iban finishes each work with a convincingly realistic portrayal.