New Paintings by John DiPaolo

Dolby Chadwick Gallery presents New Paintings by John DiPaolo, on view from April 1 through May 29, 2010. Non-representational in style, the surfaces of DiPaolo’s canvases articulate a dramatic and varied physical topography. Areas of richly colored, densely applied paints are expertly counterbalanced by the enveloping strokes of blended, more muted hues; the relationships between the resultant forms produce an animated buoyancy that presages the stirring of something new. The arresting addition of silver enamel serves to further anchor and enhance DiPaolo’s compositional structures. The visceral experiences elicited by these dynamic yet meditative compositions will undoubtedly remain with viewers long after they stop looking.

Originally a realist, DiPaolo abandoned representational painting early on to embrace abstraction and the multivalent, expressive power of paint. In order to unearth and articulate the spirit of his medium, DiPaolo works and reworks layers of paint and enamel using a palette knife. With such painstaking attention to tactile quality, balance and color density, the materiality of the paint emerges as the artist’s revered subject matter.

John DiPaolo was born in New York in 1946. He earned a B.F.A. from San Francisco Art Institute in 1974 followed by a M.A. in 1977 from San Francisco State University. Along with numerous private and corporate collections, DiPaolo’s work is also in the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Art where he is currently showing “Big Abstract,” 2002, a 12’ x 10’ painting that is the centerpiece of an exhibition entitled “Juicy Paint.” This will be DiPaolo’s sixth solo show at the Dolby Chadwick Gallery.