About Looking
ABOUT LOOKING - Individual exhibition of paintings by Peter De Lorenzo
- Exhibition dates: 17 May to 2 June 2024 - Thursday to Sunday 11am to 4pm
Peter De Lorenzo Adagio in blue 92 x 92 cm acrylic, pigment, pencil on canvas
Exhibiting artist: Peter De Lorenzo
Artist/s statement
There are no images in my paintings but if you spend some time, I will share with you that feeling/experience with which they began- watching light on water or looking through a blind at sunset, seeing rippling blues and reds in a stained glass window while listening to a choir sing and feeling excitement and somewhere a sense of peace.
ADAGIO IN BLUE
A bright blue, a deep blue.
My work in Painting is inspired by notions of musical space, geometry, colour, and the
materiality of paint. My work can be described by the terms non-objective, or abstract. I draw inspiration from both the history of abstraction in painting and from the elements of music.
Paul Klee focussed his attention on the contents of his paint-box referring to ‘the row of watercolours as a keyboard of colours for improvisation ...,’
My paintings are ‘hand-made’, Lines are drawn, erased and redrawn or semi-randomly poured; Colours, subject to variation, are mixed and remixed, nuanced by the addition of pure pigments; Edges are characterised by irregularities resulting from the process of painting.
Single or repeated lines indicate a speed, a direction, a border between shapes, an
acceleration or a slowing. Colours present themselves in continuous flux, related to changing conditions, inferring a mood or a feeling. The intended experience is not one of exactitude but of the lived value found not only in central relationships but also in the edges of things, in the imperfections and juxtapositions.
If colour can be employed in a way that parallels music, then music also answers to
mathematics, and in turn to a set of geometries which orchestrate pattern and movement. In classical music it is customary to describe the tempo of a piece by one or more words, often indicating in addition the mood of a piece.
ADAGIO: A slow tempo in music, “at ease”, mellow, a slower pace; it evokes a sense of calmness, serenity, or melancholy.
I often refer in my paintings to musical forms and structures, such as theme and variation, transposition, rhythm and repetition.
You ask why I paint abstract pictures, what are they about? I answer by saying it is like you are listening to a piece of music, for example by Bach, there is
structure that comes from maths, patterns which recur, are repeated with variations; you take away a feeling of calm.
It is like walking along the shoreline and watching the effects of light on the water, or looking through a venetian blind at a sunset or a bright cloudless sky. It is also like being in Paris and looking at stained glass windows in a cathedral while listening to a solo voice or a choir or a flute– you get a feeling which might be excitement, or a sense of peace, then you see the repeating patterns in intense blues and reds as the light shines through the windows; And then there are the extraordinary Robertson sunsets...
There are no images you can recognise in my paintings, but as you spend some time engaging with the work, I feel that I have been successful if you are able to share something of that same feeling.
Peter De Lorenzo apr/2024, edited by Chantal Grech
Instagram @peterdelorenzo
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For more information contact: Peter De Lorenzo via email: peterdelorenzo@iinet.net.au or mobile 0433 086 387
Opening night: Saturday 18 May 2pm to 4pm
Thursday to Sunday, 11am to 4pm
Accessibility information: The gallery has an accessible bathroom. There is a set of stairs inside the building and a lift for wheelchair access.