Diane Belfiglio ♥ diane@belfiglio.com ♥ 330.494.8459 ♥ www.belfiglio.com
P R O F E S S I O N A L
MEDIA
Acrylic on canvas, Prismacolor pencil on paper, and oil pastel on paper
WORK AVAILABLE
Work is available for viewing and for purchase online at www.belfiglio.com
Her work is also available:
Second April Galerie, Canton, Ohio
The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
The Governor’s Mansion and Residence, Columbus, Ohio
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Diane Belfiglio (pronounced Bel fee’ lee o) earned her B.F.A. in drawing, painting, and graphics from The Ohio State University in 1978, and her M.F.A. in painting from Syracuse University in 1980. In 1980, she was the recipient of a $6,000 Aid-to-Individual-Artists Fellowship Grant from the Ohio Arts Council. Since that time, she has exhibited in well over 150 group and solo shows regionally, nationally, and internationally. In the past, she has been affiliated with the Rubiner Gallery in greater Detroit, the Mangel Gallery in Philadelphia, John Szoke Graphics in NYC, the Brenda Kroos Gallery in Cleveland, and several other galleries and art consultants in northeast Ohio.
Currently, she represents herself. Belfiglio’s works are included in twelve corporate art collections and numerous private collections, including singer Patti LaBelle. In addition, her work is now in the permanent collections of the Itchiku Kubota Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan, and The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio. Her work is currently on view at the Governor’s Mansion and Residence in Columbus, Ohio. Recently, Belfiglio has signed a licensing agreement for her art to be reproduced through Timothy’s Fine Art and Art-Exchange.com. All of Belfiglio’s works currently available for sale are on her website: www.belfiglio.com
Since 1999, Belfiglio has been working on a series of paintings based on national historic monuments and buildings. From northeast Ohio, she has already completed three series of images from the National First Ladies Library and The McKinley National Memorial, both in Canton, Ohio, as well as from nearby historic Zoar, Ohio, and President Garfield’s residence in Mentor, Ohio. She continues to travel to other locations to continue her study of national historic monuments and buildings. Her latest oil pastel work includes images from both Jamestown and Mount Vernon in Virginia.
Belfiglio has taught part-time at Syracuse University, Kent State University, The University of Akron, and is currently an adjunct professor at Walsh University. She also teaches privately through her own studio. She lives in North Canton, Ohio, with her husband, Mike; their two children, Michael and Adrianne; two chinchillas, Diamond and Paco; and a miniature dachshund, Oscar.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Acrylic on Canvas Paintings
My paintings prominently feature closely-cropped, sunlit architectural forms. Although realistic in their presentation, I rely heavily on their underlying abstract qualities to give to the already imposing images an even greater sense of power. Shadows, ethereal by nature, take on a rigid structural aspect in these compositions. Colors range from brilliant to subtle in an effort to reproduce the strong sense of sunlight streaming through each piece.
Yet for all the images’ visual power, the delicate details in the architecture, and often in the surrounding vegetation, are also prominently featured in this work. The resultant blend produces a heightened, stylized reality. My intention is to have the viewer see the mundane transformed into the extraordinary, and to see beauty in images that generally go unnoticed by most of us on a daily basis.
Oil Pastel Drawings
This series of oil pastel drawings represents a fresh new beginning for me. This new work is still firmly grounded in the same formalist ideas that have interested me since my beginnings as a professional artist: closely cropped architectural images bathed in the play of sunlight and shadows.
However, there are two significant changes. The first change is the medium. I have always painted with acrylic paint on canvas for most of my professional work. My secondary medium has been Prismacolor pencils on paper. Couple either of these mediums with the intricacy and detail of my subject matter and the resultant work takes an average of 200-350 hours to create. My teaching schedule, my family, and my mother’s illness will not allow me to work in that tedious manner right now. Enter oil pastels, an expedient medium that I have taught for years, but have never worked with professionally.
The other significant change this work represents is my return to a more formalist, abstract approach to my realistic images. Having just returned from a family vacation in Virginia, the photographs I took at the Jamestown archeological site lent themselves perfectly to these concepts; hence the inception of the Jamestown Geometry series. The Potomac Patterns images are taken from the pier at Mount Vernon. And there are many more images to come from Mount Vernon. This series represents the newest, continuing development in my work.
ARTIST PORTFOLIO
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- Glimpses of Zoar I
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- Monumental Flags
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- Victorian Vignettes IV
