Artwork Around Town’s featured artist for January, 2012 is highly acclaimed regional artist Gerald Van Scyoc. “Oil Dependency”, his newest one man show opens Friday, January 6th, at the Centre Market gallery. This visually enthralling show can be viewed in the Studio Gallery, and attendees will be able to meet the artist from 5:30 to 8PM. The public is always invited and refreshments are provided.
Van Scyoc is a well-known regional artist whose paintings are in many private collections as well as permanent collections in public venues such as Ohio University Eastern and the Martins Ferry Public Library. Lately, his painting “The Truth About Everlasting Love” was awarded first place in the oil painting category of the “Ohio Show” at Zanesville, Ohio.
The Artworks show is entitled “Oil Dependency”. The play on the political aspect of the title is typical of the actual paintings of this realist painter with a twist. Influenced by Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Willem DeKooning, and other realists with a surreal edginess, Van Scyoc’s paintings are deceptively realistic and beautifully rendered in exquisite detail, but always with a hidden or not so hidden “other meaning” taking the painting into the more surreal genre.
Most of the large pieces of art work are visually overloaded, with vivid color, and masterful composition. Every square inch of these large canvases is active. Two paintings, “Custer” and “Guernica, Ohio” are good examples of this type of Van Scyoc’s work. Since the beginning of 2011, Gerald has created some new works which contain a calmer side of the painter. Negative space has become a part of some of this new work, tempting the artist to call this show, “Some Calm, but Mostly Chaos”. No matter the compositional style, the artist’s idea is to create a work of art that is remembered long after it’s viewed.
But the show “Oil Dependency” reflects more about the artist’s attitude and his dependency on oil painting. He loves the timelessness of the medium and the idea that it never gets old. Styles may change in oil painting, but the fundamentals always remain the same; a canvas, brushes, and oil paint. This mainly self-taught artist admits to being dependent on a grid to draw. His paintings are first composed on a computer and then are painted from color printouts. Van Scyoc is a visual artist using the oldest of mediums to express his creativity generated on the most modern of artistic tools, the computer.
This full-time graphic artist avoided learning anything about art in college, using the techniques to paint that he learned in high school. Through his personal research he has studied many artists who have influenced his work. Van Scyoc is an oil painter of the old school who has advanced the craft in his own style welding it with the accuracy and precision of the computer. This isn’t Painting 2.2 upgraded from Painting 2.0. This is vivid, active, funny, clever, ingenious painting rendered with Old Master’s attention to detail by a superb craftsman. Living artists that inspire him include: Dana Schutz, Justin Mortimer, Ryan Trecartin, David Lynch, Radiohead, and Che Elias. His studio is in Shadyside, Ohio.
As always two shows open each month at Artworks. The show in the North Gallery this month displays the work of students of the Lyceum Academy. Their instructor Georgette Stock, well-know art teacher and college lecturer, exposes her students to a variety of media. Student work is always refreshing and fun to view.
Artworks Around Town is a non-profit cooperative featuring the work of local artists installed in the Centre Market at 2200 Market St, Wheeling, WV,. Each month Artworks sponsors two new shows opening on the first Friday of the month.