Artist Profile | Carolanna Parlato

Dedalus Foundation
Nov 18, 2015 9:15PM

                        Twofold: Artist -Teacher, Teacher - Artist

Carolanna Parlato

 
PS 295 
Brooklyn, NY 


carolannaparlato.com

Carolanna Parlato was born in Brooklyn and earned her M.F.A. at the San Francisco Art Institute. Solo exhibitions of her paintings have been held at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York; The Phatory, New York; Pelavin Fine Art, New York; Jeffrey Coploff Gallery, New York; the Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY; and OH+T Gallery, Boston. Recently her work has been included in “Surfacing” a two-person exhibition at Amy Simon Fine Art in Westport, CT. Several works from her Vortical series were included in the exhibition, “Pour,” which originated at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL and travelled to Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York and Lesley Heller Workspace, New York. Parlato’s work has also been seen in group exhibitions with the Art in Embassies Program in Guatemala City and “Material Color” at the Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ as well as the Brooklyn Museum. Parlato’s paintings have been written about in Art in America, Art News, Art Critical, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times. Parlato’s work can be found in public collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Public Art for Public Schools, New York; and the Art Bank Collection U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C. Parlato is represented by Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York and will have her fourth solo exhibition with the gallery in January 2016.


"Eden II," 2015, acrylic on canvas, 42 x 50 in.

How do you see the relationship between your art and your teaching?  

I am in awe of the ways in which children handle art materials and create meaning in an immediate and intuitive manner. An inner drive guides them through their work. For them each painting is a new starting point, a kind of platform from which new pictorial solutions can take shape. Color is manifold; it is created by and within light. I place individual color patches on a light ground over the surface of the canvas. Using brush and palette knife in a spontaneous manner, rejecting and reworking the paint, a many-layered crust forms on the surface. Color has an intense presence: it functions as a sensual and mental material. The gesture and shape of the color fields, whether horizontally layered or floating freely on the canvas creates poetic moments in the works. Effects of color are many. Color brings light and expansion in space. It is both material and subject. The various acts of painting, brushing, scraping, pouring, and smearing are highly concentrated. Through these I can balance tensions, harmonies, emphases, and moments of resistance. The painting takes form through a finely tuned process, which balances the deliberate and spontaneous gestures. 

"Grounding," 2013, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 in.

"Over and Ever," 2015, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 in.

"Sway," 2014, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 in.

TWOFOLD: ARTIST - TEACHER, TEACHER - ARTIST 

OCTOBER 9 - NOVEMBER 22 


AN EXHIBITION OF WORKS BY ARTISTS WHO TEACH IN NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Dedalus Foundation