Arts
Arts

Sean O’Neil, Lauren R. Scott, Anthony F. Vega - Artists in the Gallery- November

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Sean O’Neil is an artist living and working in Philadelphia. He is a current fellow at The Center for Emerging Visual Artists. O’Neil works out of his studio at the Crane Arts Building in Philadelphia. He has been selected for solo exhibitions in Philadelphia and Cleveland and has been selected for juried and curated exhibitions in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Cleveland. O’Neil was most recently selected for a curated group exhibition at Fe Gallery in Pittsburgh in May 2009.

Born in Cranbury, New Jersey, Lauren Scott was influenced by a quirky middle-aged high school art teacher who had changed her view of art and imagination forever. Following high school, she moved to Baltimore and began her education at the Maryland Institute College of Art where she focused on oil painting and started to combine the style of narrative with the handwork of textiles. Scott received her MFA degree at the University of Delaware in May 2008 and taught an Art Appreciation style foundations class within the Fashion department at the university. She is a scavenger for visual ideas and all of her paintings tell a story. The iconography within her body of work resembles a past experience and memory -- where the real is reduced to something tangible.

Anthony Vega is a visual artist and musician from the Philadelphia area. Originally from the rural town of Green Creek, New Jersey, he has spent the last eight years pursuing his artistic career. Anthony completed the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Delaware and is teaching for the University and directing the university’s Philadelphia Gallery “UD@Crane” in the Crane Arts Building. His undergraduate work was completed at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He has exhibited work in galleries and other venues in and around Philadelphia, New York and Delaware. His current work is an exploration of the contemporary relationship to image, culture and abstraction.



The Artists’ Statement:
Within the history of painting exist some interesting ideas around image, narrative, meaning and observation. Given our current relationship to images, how can painting “make a comeback” in contemporary art given the way we see the world and why does the representation of images, narrative and the figure remain long after the Italian Renaissance and the Internet? The three artists in “Observations” question and explore these notions and carry something of a loyalty to the image, to painting and the various forms of dubious marginality these forms confront. On a human,and sensual level, this loyalty is a common denominator to social norms that represent a documentation of the potential loss of looking. These works, some in a humiliating and blatant fashion and others in a subtle exploration of form and content within historical and contemporary media, talk not only about painting, but also about reality through painting.
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