March 5 - April 5, 2019
Palms : Shawn Watrous
(main gallery)
Public Reception: Saturday, March 9th, 5-8 pm
From March 5th to April 5th, BoxHeart Gallery is proud to present Shawn Watrous: Palms on exhibit in our main gallery. There is what we have in the moment and there are the moments we carry with us. These memories are singular, they are our own and define us as much as we define them. Organized by Nicole Capozzi and Joshua Hogan, owners of BoxHeart Gallery, Shawn Watrous: Palms is a reflection of the visual experience of his youth and the distance that now exists, both in terms of time and space. We are alone in our understanding of ourselves and in our perception of the world we dwell in.
Watrous’ childhood was spent in San Mateo California, just south of San Francisco and just north of Silicon Valley. It is a place that has undergone great economic change over the last few decades as well as continual development and massive population growth. There are places unrecognizable to him now, but there are places stuck in time where the view remains unchanged. The palms still stand above the small stuccoed houses, regardless if the mundane now cost a million dollars. Watrous’ paintings come from a time of going back to where he is from and walking and looking. They capture a fragment of the past not only as it was but also as it is for him now. The paintings included in Shawn Watrous: Palms demonstrate how what is familiar can also be closed off. We cannot really return to what we remember and when we try, our experience is altered by nostalgia and emotion. There’s a bit of an undoing that takes place with that kind of experience. Painting is a way for Watrous to take that alteration of reality and make a visible expression of both what he sees and what he feels.
Watrous was born in San Francisco CA, in 1977 and was raised on the San Francisco Peninsula surrounded by ocean, bay, mountains, and urban sprawl. Images from this part of the country are imprinted in his mind and continue to inform his artwork and aesthetic interests. He received his BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2002 and his MFA from Kent State University, Kent Ohio in 2013. He currently resides in Western Pennsylvania.
March 5 - April 5, 2019
Night Air : Crista Pisano
(2nd-floor gallery)
Public Reception: Saturday, March 9th, 5-8 pm
From March 5th to April 5th, BoxHeart Gallery is proud to present Crista Pisano: Night Air on exhibit in our 2nd-floor gallery. Organized by Nicole Capozzi and Joshua Hogan, owners of BoxHeart Gallery, Crista Pisano: Night Air presents new contemporary paintings rooted in the great tradition of American history. As a landscape painter living in the shadows of New York's Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains, Pisano is fortunate to be following in the footsteps of some of the greatest Hudson River School Painters from the 19th Century and American landscape painters that followed.
It is vital for a landscape painter to study outdoors in order to fully understand how to interpret nature. Pisano is grateful that she was taught this at an early age. The ability to experience light, value, color, and atmospheric changes within nature firsthand has been crucial in her development as a landscape painter. The unpredictability of light phenomenon during each outing is the most exciting part of each painting she creates. These phenomena and other changes in nature force her to make important decisions about the mood and composition of every painting. It is the consistent study of natural elements and ever-changing atmospheric conditions that keep her returning to the outdoors and ultimately applying it to canvas.
Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Pisano began painting in oils in 1989 under the instruction of John Phillip Osborne at the Ridgewood Art Institute in Ridgewood NJ. She graduated from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in 2000, receiving her BFA in Painting, and in 2003, received her MFA in Painting from the New York Academy Graduate School of Figurative Art. Pisano paints landscapes mostly en plein air as well as in her studio in Nyack, NY, and is known for painting on a small scale. Influenced by the Hudson River School, she also loves the Macchiaioli, a group of Italian Painters active in Tuscany in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. Some of her favorite artists are George Inness, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Martin Johnson Heade, and Edward Lear.
Pisano is a member of numerous art organizations including the Barrett Art Center, the Rye Art Center, the Garrison Art Center, and the Lyme Art Association, where she is an Elected member. Additionally, she belongs to the Palisades Interstate Park Commission’s “Artists in the Parks” program and the Hopper House in Nyack NY. Aside from participating in various plein air events throughout the year, she exhibits throughout New England and New York. She has received numerous awards and honors, including “Best in Show” at the Adirondack Plein Air Festival in both 2012 and 2014. She also won “Honorable Mention” at Plein Air Easton in 2015 and 2016. Plein Air Magazine included Pisano as one of their featured artists in their December/January 2016 issue. She currently lives and works in the Hudson River town of Nyack NY.