October 25 - November 15, 2002

Maria Napolitano and Dan Talbot

The Chazan Gallery @ Wheeler will be presenting an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Maria Napolitano and Dan Talbot from October 25 to November 15, 2002. There will be an opening reception for the artists on Friday, October 25, from 5 - 7 p.m. The public is invited.

Maria Napolitano makes colorful paintings and drawings that reflect her interest in "finding beauty and balance in the simple, the curious, and the unnoticed." She uses images that she gleans from such diverse sources as old textbooks, her back yard, and television, and isolates them in rich fields of color or juxtaposes them with other images so that they take on new meanings. Napolitano searches for the "data of life, forming the source for paintings that function as visual metaphors that are both reflective and changeable."

Napolitano received her MFA from Syracuse University and her BFA from the University of Massachusetts, Darthmouth. She exhibits her work throughout New England.

above image: Napolitano, Swarm, oil on canvas

Dan Talbot's mixed-media pieces occupy a space between balance and chaos, between the sublime revelation and the casual doodle. Often employing text, Talbot arranges his cartoonish, surreal images to form a kind of diary. He is interested in exploring the relationship between the reality of nature and the reality of drawing. "The drawing becomes a place we go to, as well as a working, human-made model for how reality (nature) moves back and forth between being understood and being unintelligible, between strangeness and familiarity."

Talbot received his BFA from RISD and shows his work in New York and Providence.

above image: Talbot, Untitled, mixed media, 2001