Spinning
Issue 46
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from "Scrutiny"
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Featured Artist
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Joe LugaraJoe Lugara took up painting and photography as a boy after his father discarded them as hobbies. His works depict odd forms and objects, inexplicable phenomena, and fantastic dreamscapes, taking as their basis horror and science fiction films produced from the 1930s through the late 1960s.
Mr. Lugara’s work has been featured in more than 20 magazines and has appeared in numerous exhibitions in museums and galleries in the New York Metropolitan Area. His painting series, “Scrutiny,” was recently exhibited at the Noyes Museum of Art of Stockton University. His work can be viewed at www.joelugara.com. |
The Gallery
Artist Statement
“Scrutiny” is a continuing series that I’ve been working on for more than a decade. It’s the most focused comment I’ve made so far about observing the natural world.
Observing is the key. I’m more concerned with how we observe nature than I am about depicting nature accurately. I wouldn’t be working abstractly if I were concerned with physical accuracy. My purpose is to produce shapes that vaguely suggest a variety of natural forms. They should seem alien and yet familiar and should activate our imaginations as to what nature means to us. The small scale of the paintings (6” x 6” and 7” x 5”) emphasizes the intensity of observation.
The shapes allude to animals, landscapes, atmospheric conditions, insects, mud slides, plants, ravines, bones, fossils, you can’t be sure. What you can be sure about is that something is living, growing, decaying, regenerating, or maintaining its course through eons. Nature’s inscrutable. It never stops being mysterious. The more we experience its details, the broader its overall mystery becomes. That’s my goal with “Scrutiny”: To bring to the viewer, through a myriad of peculiar details, a bigger—and unavoidably mysterious—picture of nature.
Observing is the key. I’m more concerned with how we observe nature than I am about depicting nature accurately. I wouldn’t be working abstractly if I were concerned with physical accuracy. My purpose is to produce shapes that vaguely suggest a variety of natural forms. They should seem alien and yet familiar and should activate our imaginations as to what nature means to us. The small scale of the paintings (6” x 6” and 7” x 5”) emphasizes the intensity of observation.
The shapes allude to animals, landscapes, atmospheric conditions, insects, mud slides, plants, ravines, bones, fossils, you can’t be sure. What you can be sure about is that something is living, growing, decaying, regenerating, or maintaining its course through eons. Nature’s inscrutable. It never stops being mysterious. The more we experience its details, the broader its overall mystery becomes. That’s my goal with “Scrutiny”: To bring to the viewer, through a myriad of peculiar details, a bigger—and unavoidably mysterious—picture of nature.
