Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael, and Botticelli possessed talents so large and immense that they continue to resound centuries after their passing. Moving closer to our current age, giants such as Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Jackson Pollack, Rothko, and Kooning, each in their time, seem to have touched a nerve in the collective psyche that awakened not only new movements in art but new ways of perceiving the world. They remain relevant, enduring, and fascinating to this day.
Great art possesses that magical component that is at once groundbreaking, and eternal. Each of the geniuses we’ve cited had this ability to “create” in the deepest sense of the word, rather than merely imitate. Their works were all original, not in the ordinary sense of something new, fanciful and trendy that makes up so much of today’s art market, but rather original in the sense of being born and brought from some higher level.
John Varriano, American Artist seems to possess a similar type of genius: original, transcendent, eternal, and multi-faceted. Rare, he is an artist who is not satisfied with dominating one discipline of the visual arts but rather a man bent on breaking the boundaries in all of them.
With Varriano, it’s hard to tell if his primary passion is figurative or abstract oil painting. His dexterity with both is equally matched, and unsurpassed by anything we’ve seen in the contemporary art market.
Marveling at his figurative paintings, one wonders how an artist can paint with such penetrating force and controlled discipline. Varriano seems to capture an essence of his subjects we did not know existed. We see a mastery of the human form like the old-masters he studied in his youth but there is something else at play that distinguishes his work and brings it into the realm of a new creation.
Varriano makes figurative painting exciting to us once again by his unique and vast explorations of the physiological and psychological dimensions of his subjects. His anatomy is perfect, the details of the face, eyes, hands, and body language are all presented in wonderful and reveling detail; yet not so perfect as to diminish or deny the humanness of what he presents to his viewer.
We the audience, get to experience the carefully crafted brush strokes, grand orchestrations and the deliberate honing in on particular facets and fading out of others. Great detail offset by rapid and more expressionistic elements create a sense of movement and aliveness that draws one directly into his work.
Across the spectrum we encounter Varriano’s abstract paintings, creations that transcend ordinary states of consciousness. While many contemporary artists, and some of the giants spent years finding the style that would define their art and set them apart from all others, Varriano shatters our notion of artistic style, and genre all together.
Some of his abstract works present us with strange creatures and symbols bubbling up from the unconscious. Are they of old, seeping up from the predawn of civilization? Or do they speak of prophecies that lie eons ahead of our present understanding?
Other paintings seem to embody friction, fusion, power, and restraint. There is an entire language that Varriano gives us that lies beyond words. We use the word language purposefully, because the artist’s paintings seem to communicate with something buried within the soul.
Then there is elemental chaos, which Varriano handles with such deftness that it brings order to a fractured world. His paintings arouse a deeper layer of awareness, like the Mozart effect we can imagine Varriano’s abstract paintings soothing and reorienting the mind to higher and nobler realizations.
To learn more visit www.JohnVarriano-AmericanArtist.com
