Peter Fiore is a painter based in northeastern Pennsylvania, who I first profiled back in 2012.

Fiore often takes his fascination with light — particularly the horizontal light of early and late in the day — into the woods, where he seeks rhythm and balance in the intricate patterns formed by the trunks of trees and their intertwined branches.

In many of his compositions, he finds patches of sunlight that carve a theatrical spotlight on part of the forest, producing a dance of light and dark elements that invite you back into the depths of the composition.

In some of his earlier themes, he presents wider views of fields and hills, often with compositions that push the horizon higher or lower in the composition than is more commonly seen.

All of these are rendered with contrasts of high and low chroma passages, and with a marvelous painterly presentation of texture.

Fiore conducts workshops and has instructional videos available, for which you can find previews on his website and on YouTube.

Fiore’s work is currently on display in a solo show at Studio 7 Art Gallery in Bernardsville, NJ, not far from Newark and NYC.

“Peter Fiore: Perceptions” is on view until January 27, 2018.

Instead of a fake post, or some similar nonsense, let’s celebrate April Fool’s Day with a nice bit of “fool the eye” (trompe l’oeil) by Andrea Pozzo.

This is his false dome for the Jseuit Church in Vienna, a fresco painted on a gently curved surface on the ceiling. This is essentially a anamorphic projection, painted to look like the interior of a dome in deep, three-dimensional space when seen from a certain vantage point, in this case when standing in the entrance of the church.

You can see the image of the fresco viewed from the other direction (image above, bottom – from OpticalIllustions.net), where its painted distortions are obvious.