The Goldmark Cultural Center’s Norman Brown Gallery is proud to present Savage Arcadia, an exhibition of paintings by Michael Pianta.
The exhibition will be on display from 18 February 2022 to 18 March 2022. An exhibition reception will be held at the Norman Brown Gallery on Saturday, 19 February 2022, from 1:00pm to 3:00pm and Michael Pianta will present an artist talk in the Gallery at 1:30 pm that day.
For most of its long history painting has depicted the visual world. Even when the subject does not exist and cannot be observed, the visual paradigm remains one of how-things-look. How they might have looked, and how they actually look. If we had been there to see it - what would we have seen? This paradigm still has its uses and value.
With my work I join a growing number of living artists who are rediscovering the traditional techniques and methods of naturalistic painting. I utilize these skills to explore human narratives in a contemporary manner. Where history, myth and legend intersect, and our deepest archetypes are revealed, there we find the stories that live with us. The paradigm of realistic painting lends a credible veracity to the narrative, which I believe helps us see these stories in their most revealing light.
The body of work in Savage Arcadia represents my latest exploration of the various ways to create vital narrative painting today. Humankind walks a narrow road with respect to nature. We need nature to live, but nature is not a loving parent. It is literally inhuman. Cruel, merciless and indifferent. Everything we get from nature must be wrestled from it. Civilization is a defense against nature's caprices, but it is fragile, and underneath it the reality of nature remains. These paintings, by focusing on the figure, emphasize the human response to this condition. Human beings cannot defeat nature (we should not even wish to) and we cannot hide from nature, since nature will always find us. Instead, like the figures in these paintings, we must confront the world with resolve - a stoic determination in the face of adversity. Though danger is all around us (sometimes obvious, sometimes more hidden), and though the situation could tum for the worse at any moment, we must venture forth regardless. There is something ennobling about this view of humanity. We do not shrink and cower; we advance in spite of everything.
To explore this deep theme I felt it would be best to depict a not-quite-real place, a mythic place. These are explorers, anglers, survivors, but not literally construed. They exist on the plane of archetypes - the idea of a fisherman, so to speak, rather than an actual instantiation. The title of the exhibition plays into this mythic theme. Traditionally, Arcadia is an idealized, pastoral land. One thinks of nymphs and shepherds playing pan flutes. Real nature is not like this, of course, which is the point of the Arcadia myth. Real nature is ruthlessly amoral. It is “savage” in the sense of being anti-civilizational. But it is the place where humanity goes to take what it needs, to hone itself against fierce resistance, the place where our strength, intelligence, resourcefulness and grit is summoned up and put on display. So perhaps it is an Arcadia after all.
Michael Pianta (b.1986) has a BFA from UT Tyler, and an MA from the University of Dallas. He has also received certificates of completion in Drawing and Painting from the Texas Academy of Figurative Art, a classical realist atelier in Fort Worth, Texas, He has exhibited at various galleries nationally. He has taught numerous private classes and workshops in Fort Worth. His wife Audra Pianta is also a classically trained artist. Together they run Pianta Studios, which offers workshops and classes in the Metroplex area. They live in Fort Worth with their two daughters.