Mickey Williams at Ella W. Richardson Fine Art on May 4

Night Surf by Mickey Williams

Meet the very talented Charleston artist, Mickey Williams, at Ella W. Richardson Fine Art on Friday, May 4th from 5-8pm. The gallery is located at 58 Broad St.

Williams is a self-taught artist who learned his craft from studying art in books and in museums. His work is inspired by the spiritual and romantic beauty of the lowcountry that he fell in love with as a child. Today Mickey lives with his wife and three children in Mt. Pleasant.

 ”I paint the air, the land and the water that surround me. I have always felt a deep emotional and spiritual bond with nature and feel blessed to live and work in an area that is so inspiring to the mind and soul. My landscape paintings are visual interpretations of what I see with my eyes and my heart. I attempt with every painting to draw a parallel connection between nature and personal experience.”

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Linda Fantuzzo at Corrigan Gallery Opening on May 4, 2012 – Landscape Reconfigured

Corrigan Gallery LLC presents Linda Fantuzzo’s new work in a show titled “Landscape Reconfigured” opening May 4 and showing through May 30.  The opening reception will be held May 4 from 5-8pm as part of the French Quarter Gallery Association Artwalk.  The reception is open to the public and will be at the gallery in downtown Charleston at 62 Queen Street.  Ms Fantuzzo will be present.

Linda Fantuzzo©2012 Foggy pond 48” x 72” acrylic on canvas

Linda Fantuzzo’s soft, mysterious, elegant paintings are reminiscent of Joseph Mallord William Turner’s waterscapes.  Large, atmospheric passages describing the Lowcountry landscape but with a universality that opens them up to worldwide collector, is the artist’s forte.  Settling in Charleston in 1973 after a visit encouraged by Charleston’s own Manning Williams, Fantuzzo made the city her home and the surrounds her inspiration.  The artist began her journey early in high school in Endicott, New York when she illustrated book reports and discovered her love for drawing. Encouraged by a teacher, she began fine art classes. Fantuzzo pursued a degree at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In addition to the formal training at the Academy, she has developed her skills by painting en plein aire throughout Europe and the United States.

The artist has explored both abstraction and representation, in still lifes and landscapes.  Known for both her small and large scale, especially her decades long study of Kiawah Island, she has built quite a reputation for herself. Fantuzzo captures a moment in time, exploring the fleeting influence of light. She has stated, “Any object or place can be beautiful in the right light.”  She creates a tension between the light and the lack of light resulting in “luminous color and atmospheric effects.”  Dennis Stiles, poet and former feature writer for The Gallery Guide several years ago described the artist’s work:  “The objects and scenes in Fantuzzo’s paintings are often commonplace – a roadway curving through vegetation, a hunk of burnished metal, walls, clouds, a prism – but her treatment of them is anything but ordinary. Unexpected juxtapositions give many of her paintings a quietly surreal quality. She emphasizes texture tone, atmosphere and above all an inner light created by very careful purposeful handling of cool and warm colors, applied with thick and thin paints and glazes. The typical result is haunting.”  Art critic Kristina M. Kutkus wrote of Fantuzzo’s work in the catalogue,  “In the Dinghy, Lure of the Lowcountry” describing that  “The atmosphere is diffuse and evokes a poetic decay that is eloquent and personal. The beauty of this moment in time is a metaphor for change.”

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