Beginning Friday March 5th, Ann Long Fine Art will present Marc Dalessio: Giardino Italiano. The show opens on Friday, March 5th with a reception from 5 to 8 pm in the gallery at 54 Broad Street and will show until March 26th.
Born in 1972 in Los Angeles, Marc Dalessio is a naturalist painter who established himself at a young age as one of the foremost plein-air painters working today. His artistic training began at the University of California and continued in Florence, Italy where he trained as a portraitist for four years at Charles Cecil’s atelier, learning the traditional techniques of naturalistic drawing and painting.
Dalessio has continued to live in Florence for the past seventeen years, painting out of his 19th-century studio in Piazza Donatello as well as teaching at the Florence Academy of Art. He also travels extensively throughout Europe and beyond to paint for his galleries in the United States and Great Britain.
For this exhibit, Dalessio stayed closer to home to capture en plein-air the gardens of Italy. His paintings depict the private and public gardens of Florence, Lake Como, and Tuscany and are based on his own experience with nature as well as the influence of late 19th century landscape painters.
Dalessio comments on finding inspiration in nature: “When I first began painting outdoors, I remember walking for hours trying to find something that inspired me. Now I see beauty everywhere. Being inspired is like any other skill in that practice makes it easier. Having a personal vision of what an artist wants to paint also helps a great deal, but the best artists are always pushing themselves to tackle new subjects. I believe an artists can learn to develop an awareness and sensitivity to inspirational subjects to the point that he or she feels inspiration almost on demand.”
