* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Grace Degennaro received an MFA from Columbia University in New York in 1986. She also studied at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs and Sir John Cass School of Art in London.
Degennaro begins each series by cutting stencils of each form, and uses these to make watercolors and small oil paintings on linen. The resulting images are then transferred onto a grid of large canvases. The measurements of each paintings reflects the golden rectangle proportion, but through her intricate process, a subtle but humanizing asymmetry is introduced to an otherwise perfect symmetry.
Her paintings are most obviously influenced by the non-Western traditions of Byzantine mosaics and Indian tantra drawings, as well as the organic grids of 20th century minimalists. Each painting is based on archetypal forms with potential to communicate ideas that transcend language and culture.
The myriad of marks and colors are intended to support and reflect her themes of ritual, growth, duality, and the passage of time. Some recurring forms in her work include: diamonds, concentric circles, crosses, cubes, braids, vines, and the vesica piscis shape.
