Marc Dalessio is an American painter, now living in Croatia, who I first profiled back in 2009, at the recommendation of British painter Julian Merrow-Smith.
Dalessio lived in Florence for 20 years, and during that time studied at Charles H. Cecil Studios, and atelier that traces its heritage to the École Des Beaux-Arts teachings of Jean-Léon Gérôme, by way of American artists like R.H. Ives Gammell and William McGregor Paxton.
Though Dalessio has obviously absorbed the fundamentals of drawing and composition, and an emphasis on working sight-size, from the academic tradition, his work has a fresh, contemporary immediacy born of a desire to let his perceptions of nature pass through him onto the canvas in a manner as unadulterated by concerns of personal style as possible.
Dalessio’s work, both in large refined studio pieces and in economically realized location paintings, has a wonderful sense of the nature of light, particularly in the aspect of value. Whether in the contrasts of bright daylight, dappled shade or the subtle relationships of overcast and shadow, his paintings always impress me with the feeling of real light, not lighting effects that have been molded to meet a compositional need.
On his website there galleries of his work in portraiture and landscape. The home page is essentially a blog, and you will find not only additional work, but articles on technique and materials in which Dalessio shares some of what he has learned. In addition, he has a YouTube channel, with both demos and informational videos.
Dalessio’s work is the subject of a solo show that is currently at the Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor, NY. The show is on view until July 13, 2014.
In addition to the portfolio of work on the page devoted to the show, the gallery’s website has an regular online gallery of Dalessio’s work, that is part of their ongoing representation for him.
You can see more images, and at a much larger size, on his Flickr stream.
[Show notice via Underpaintings]
