NYAB Event - Melodie Provenzano "Rock Center"

Melodie Provenzano "Rock Center"

Lyons Wier Gallery

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Inspired by objects such as figurines, glassware, bows, and plastic toy animals, Provenzano strives to find an intrinsic personality and meaning for each object in her paintings. Once she has created a dialogue with these inanimate entities, she meticulously selects and arranges whimsical “mock dramas” that build narrative momentum until a balanced composition appears. The artist states, “My paintings are like a catalog of dreams. The composition makes sense to me visually and emotionally without a clearly defined concept to be illustrated. Their meaning is often not given on a conscious level. I paint from life, directly observing these self-created make-believe scenes. My process is one of time consuming intense focus and close attention to detail. Each painting is a reflection of my ever changing emotional life”.

The benchmark painting, Rock Center, takes its name from Rockefeller Center, the celebrated landmark area in midtown Manhattan, where for the first ten years after graduating from Parsons, Provenzano painted backdrops and installed props for Saks Fifth Avenue and its famed Christmas window displays. The overwhelming stimuli offered by the hustle and bustle of midtown afforded her the opportunity to create and project various scenarios driven by the every-day emotional and logistical chaos.

Sifting through all these discordant scenes and associating value and meaning to her experience has played an invaluable role in the development of her paintings. She has established a personal dialogue to create calm from the chaos by deciphering and instilling meaning into the animate and inanimate alike. These internal relationships create the compositions that transcend the commonplace and everyday. For the artist, Rock Center also represents the “stillness” of the still life itself. Provenzano’s paintings are made up of inert components, unmoving like a mountain, that act as a metaphor for the mind's ability to be stable, still and composed while facing the changes and challenges brought about by life.