Essay Art- Artist Dominique Ciancio

Dominique Ciancio was born in 1983 Sliema, Malta. He started drawing and painting in his early teens when he was 12/13 years old. He studied History of Art  and Philosophy at the University of Malta. In 2004 he got a degree. He also has a four year Diploma in fine Arts from the School of Art.

 He worked on back drops for film companies such as Universal Pictures and productions with film director Steven Spielberg filming in Malta. When he was the age of 22 he travelled to Northern Europe mainly Scandinavia. For a few years he studied and painted full time while living in Oslo, Norway . In 2010 he decided to move to Gozo. Specializing in oil painting he took commissions and exhibitions. 

Ciancio admires a variety of artists, film directors and paintings of the old masters. His favourite subject to paint is people . when he paints portraits he trains himself .He depicts life models during a 2 hour sitting. Then he uses his imagination and always using a mirror for guidance.

I asked Ciancio if he was inspired by local scenery but he prefers more universal themes and is inspired by films. He also experiments with sound which he had experimented with other artists in England. He creates projects combining picture and sound.

In his paintings he tries to create a story using his own life experience. He mostly uses oils and  buys and mixes his own quality pigments with oil. He prepares his own canvas. He also uses Jute as the base for his paintings.  He likes to create certain vibrant colours with glazes and  he scratches the paint using tools to create texture and expression.  Most of his paintings are finished with varnish.

He has exhibited abroad and locally. Some local exhbitions include,The Curious 2010, Silent Pulses  2011, The Mirror Works  2012,  Unpack  2014,  Semartilma - Dissolving Borders 2014/15 and his current exhibition Ditto- Approaching portraiture  2015.

In his latest exhibition Ditto he focuses on portraiture.His studies, texture and the final output. He used mixed media not just oils. He used, pastels,pen and ink,watercolour and acrylic. 

I chose Dominique Ciancio because he has original works.

Self -Portrait

Travelling Glows, oils on canvas
Private Collection

This painting is one of his works. It depicts three girls, two old men and an old woman travelling on a ship  Maybe they are hoping to find a better place for them. As you can see a teenager is holding a lamp. It shows a glow on their faces The background shows the sun, clouds, sky and the sea. The setting  sky is dramatic and the sea shows different types blues from light to dark.

Age

In this painting a curious baby is crawling looking at a screen painting of an old man feeling sad and his eyesight are looking down, on the right hand side is a teenager looking a the old man. when I look at it I see the baby looking at the screen like that what I am going to look like or else he is looking at his father and his grandfather. It depicts light on the baby and on the screen the texture of the painting is different with colours of golden yellow and brown and greyish colours.

The Balancer

The Balancer depicts a man balancing on the wire holding a stick in his hands. He seems to be balancing above roof tops  with  the city below in the distance. The sky is a night scene full of darkness with hues of blacks and blues. 

These images are the exhibition called ditto of 11th till 29th April 2015 in Gozo, Victoria.

Sandra & Romina
Oil on canvas

This painting is a private collection. Two ladies are posing and sitting down. On the left we can see she is sitting on a chair and the other one on the chest. blue and red curtains form a background. The light is coming from above.

Studies on prepared linen
Mixed media on linen

This painting depicts two teenage girls.This is a sketch on linen. There is a lot of texture in this painting.

Harvard reference

 Dominique Ciancio. 2000. Dominique Ciancio paintings. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.ciancioart.com/index.html. [Accessed 17 April 15].

Exhibition Carmelo Mangion - Art

 Carmelo Mangion 

Visions of a Maltese Master

Casino Maltese

6th -27th March 2015

I visited Carmelo Mangion's exhibition 'Visions of a Maltese Master' at the Casino Maltese. I was invited to the opening on 6th March by his daughter Adrienne Cassar. He was a husband,a  father, a friend, a teacher and an incredible artist, who silently revolutionized art in Malta.  The collection of his works display consists pieces in various media, gouache, watercolour, oil and etching.  In this exhibition there are family portraits, landscape, seascape, still life, biblical paintings, etchings and abstract compositions.  

     

Title : The Bathers

Media:  Oil on Masonite

In this painting I see the beach. In the foreground there are two ladies in the nude. One of them is laying down, the other one sitting down they are looking at the people and the environment. The painting gives a calm and relaxed mood.  In the foreground the artist used warm colours and cold colours in the background. The oil paint is diluted and he scratched the hair and some areas with the wooden handle of the brush.  The artist uses pure white for the sea or  he left the primer showing. The artist seems to have worked quickly and from the imagination. It reminds me of an Impressionist painting.

In my opinion the painting looks simple, not complicated.

       

                         Title :  Methodist Church Floriana

          Media: Oil on Masonite

This painting is the Methodist Church at Floriana. . The painting depicts a night scene. The road looks slippery and wet probably it was raining. The church reflects on the ground. The building is not straight. The distortion  makes the painting very interesting. He uses  red, blues, black yellows, greys, orange and white. The reds are mainly on the church and the shades of grey and blue around it.

 If it was my work, I would include a figure wearing a coat and holding an umbrella in the painting to make it more interesting.

     

        Title :  Dead end street

          Media: Gouache on paper

The painting depicts buildings next to each other in a dead end street. The road has a distorted perspective.It is painted from high floor of a building. The two street lamps shed lights forming a triangle in the street. The sky is red with greys and blues which makes it looks like a sunset. The red of the sun is seen on the church in the distance. It looks like a fast sketch.  

In my opinion the buildings in this painting are too crowded. It looks like a children's drawing.

           Title :  Boats at Msida

 Media: Etching

This is an etching. It shows a seascape at Msida. There is a Church and buildings in the background, boats in the background and foreground. His style has a certain roughness especially the boat and the floor in the foreground. The buildings although in the distance they have certain detail. Only reflections indicate the sea. A few lines gives the sky a dramatic effect. The darkest area are the boats in the foreground and the ship in the distance. The paper is stained due to its age and maybe improper storage.

I would depict people riding on a boat, people fishing or else people swimming in the sea but I would not change the etching because it is perfect the way it is.

   

    Title :  Salome

             Media: Oil on Masonite

Mangion uses his wife as a model for Salome. Salome is seated dressed up elegantly in a blue dress wearing a necklace, earnings,  a bracelet on her wrist, a ring on her finger and on her right hand holding a glass of wine. She looks as if she is very proud and calm.  She looks at the 'vision' of Saint John the Baptist's head bleeding on the plate. The colour of the head and the blood contrasts with her pale skin. It is a modern version of the story of the bible.

Realism

Realism is an art movement, lasted around forty years from 1840-1880. The artists tried to depict from the real world. Realism originated in France. They painted everyday subjects and people.They did not try to interpret they add emotional meaning to the scene. Realism portrayed real people carrying out unglamorous, everyday activities.

Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet was born in June 10th 1819 in Ornans, France. He was the leader of French Realism and he gave name to this movement when he opened his one-man show in Paris. He chooses a large scale subjects such as life,death,destiny, the ocean, the forest and often produced physically large paintings. Brilliant, technique with thick, physical paint. Courbet use to carry on his back a folding easel  that contained everything he needs to use paint,canvas, palette, oil, turpentine and rags to paint outside nature. All the activities, people and place he painted and valued down to earth, provincial life more than highly  fashionable Parisian glamour. His work was a range most brilliantly inspired and executed .

Gustave Courbet - Self portrait

The Meeting

This painting started in 1854. On the right hand side he painted himself a self portrait, the man in the green jacket beside the dog was well dressed indeed. but the man wearing a brown suit his name is Calas and serves the man besides him.The man in the centre is rich and flacked by both of his servants Calas and his dog.

Courbet head is looking to the angle of the servant. The gentleman in green is the son of a banker and an industrialist his name was Alfred Bruyas who is Courbet's patrons and himself is a painter. Bruyas removed his right glove to shake Courbet hand but Courbet did not returned the gesture.

A Burial at Ornans

     

The stone breakers

These paintings show the misery of peasant life A Burial at Ornans depicts his great uncle's country funeral. 

 The second painting depicts two dirt-poor labourers busy at grindingly hard work.

His inspiration came from group portraits of Dutch Civic guards in the17th century while the sumptuous blacks recall Spanish art. The colours in the dark greens and dull grey produces an austere tone, robust technique gives the people and the natural elements and weight.

The stone breakers painting are shown two men, On the right side there is an old man and on the left is a younger man. Courbet expresses  the feelings of hardship.

He painted the merciless soil and harsh working conditions of the stone breakers. Courbet use colours palette of greys, whites and browns effectively conveys the dreary, monotonous and mechanical nature of their work.   

 

Jean Francois Millet

Jean francois Millet was born October 4th ,1814. He is a French painter in the late 19th century. His paintings depicted scenes of peasants and rural life. He was a founder of the Barbizon school.

Jean Francois Millet

 The Gleaners by Jean-Francois millet

This is an oil painting by Millet.  It was first exhibited in 1857. In this painting shows three women picking wheat from a field after a harvest.  The three women are in a  stark and barren foreground, there faces are hidden under the shadow of red,blue and yellow bonnets. The three are depicted as folded from the waist as if carrying a heavy and crushing load. one of the ladies rest her arms across her back, to keep her balance or to support exhausted muscles.

The sun is shining but not on the Gleaners. Behind the in the background are hired workers, people fortunate enough to have jobs, and healthy enough to work these jobs. They are bathed in sunlight there clothes are pure white. The darker tones are in the foreground while the brighter colours are in the background. This gives a feeling or mood of lack of harmony in the painting. 

Website

no author. 2015. khan academy. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/avant-garde-france/realism/a/courbet-the-sto

nebreakers.

[Accessed 24 February 15].

no author. 2015. Khan Academy. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/avant-garde-france/realism/a/courbet-bonjour-monsieur-courbet.[Accessed 24 February 15].

El Conquistador. 2010. Les Glaneuses, a painting by Jean-François Millet. [ONLINE] Available at:http://elconquistador.org/?page_id=6692. [Accessed 27 February 15].

Books

Cumming,R (2005). Art. London: Dorling Kindersley. 

Farthing,S (2008). Great Artist. 2nd ed. united states : Tristan de lancey. 

Janes, K. I. a. Z., 2011. Great Paintings. London