cianne fragione

Like any artist, I am engaged with the requirements of my forms and mediums as artworks, but even in the studio I am always aware of the active presence of my history as a second-generation Sicilian American. This influences my practice in a variety of ways and, I believe, it can be detected in the work: in my love of color and light in art, and my intuition as a colorist; in my love of fine craft, which I regard as ingrained, virtually genetic, passed to me through my father, a builder and ironworker; in my sense of composition and form, often clothing or garden shapes, which comes from my grandmother, from the ornamental forms I knew as a child in Italian festivals, in church, or in home altars, and from my long study of Italian art history; and in the deep satisfaction derived from accumulating, handling, and building with found objects, typically old, much used, imbued with a sensation of the past. I also turn to the vivid memories of several trips to Italy, where I discovered a feeling of true homeland that I have not always found here.

Cianne Fragione: Detail panel from: Heaven and Earth/are dressed/in their summer wear (2007-09, 60 x 276 inches, oil, mixed media, assemblage on linen

Cianne Fragione: Salute Antonio (2006-07), 40x 28 inches, oil and mixed media on canvas

Cianne Fragione: Middle panel of tyripych: Ritorno (2007), 32 x 180 inches assemblage and oil on panels. Each panel 32 x 60 inches