Soul Train Tickets On Painter Carlo Criscione

The following article has been taken from Winter 2004 edition of “Sicilia Parra”, bi-annual newsletter of “Arba Sicula”, Department of Languages and Literatures, St. John’s University, Jamaica, New York.

You can download the original article here:
Sicilia Parra – Winter 2004

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By Giuseppe Provenzano

As an art critic and historian it can be difficult, sometimes, to have to write about a painter whose works lay still on canvas awaiting a reply from the viewer. There is a process that goes on in one’s head by which, as it unravels in one’s mind spinning as if from a yam out of control, it begins to touch certain points connecting them in such a way until a certain meaning arises. Not a rational meaning of course, but a rather subtle and tenuous thought that, like the thread of the yam itself, begins to float weightlessly and, as it wanders in space, images and forms begin to appear. No labels therefore, no easy tags, the kind that immediately allow us to place anything and anyone in a given compartment, but rather tickets to an imaginary place where we are able to discover what the artist is trying to say from the depths of his soul. 

Nature, landscapes, still lives, a few portraits populate the production of Criscione’s work. A world that is clearly the one of his native places, distinctly Sicilian and even more distinctive of southeastern Sicily. In the southeast of Sicily, the comer that looks onto the long Mediterranean swells that arrive from Byzantium, light is different than the rest of the Island, the sea assumes much more intense shades of blue; one tends to pause, transfixed, when staring at this sea. It seems bigger in this part of the Island, rounder with the curvature of the earth more visible, deeper and then, as if by some mysterious workings the mind, one begins to talk to the sea and answers do come to the questions holding within them a message for the soul. Carlo Criscione, who was born in Ragusa in 1946, has spent his life in this comer of the world and it is only natural that this particular light and artistic muse should fill his art. 

We are not talking about a certain reading of Criscione’s work, but rather of a mysterious quality of the land that he is able to capture and, in a single composition, to portray it faithfully even when he is painting an urban landscape without sea. One could say this is intuitive work, a native talent, as if he were a nai’ve painter; yet it is obvious from the colorful strokes that he is a mature artist. The composition betrays his knowledge of the masters and his teachers alike, the juxtaposition of colors and shapes talk of a mind at ease in the play of geometrical schemes. His vision and ability succeed in abstracting from the real the essence of things and in this process he arrives to a representation that is nothing other than an invitation to a place of meditation.

Even when the world appears fantastically transfixed, as critic Nunzio Zago once stated of Criscione’s art, we still know at every given moment what is at stake when we look at some of his paintings. As we allow the eye to dive into the light and the sea of his paintings we pass beyond the apparent naivete of the artist and enter a realm in which we are one on one with nature; that nature that every Sicilian would be able to recognise because it is one with Sicilian life itself. 

We recognize it as an invitation to go on a trip and that, indeed, Criscione is inviting us on a voyage where we know almost exactly what awaits us upon arrival. It is not surprising therefore, that many of his paintings portray dissolving lines, forced perspectives leading to infinity, vanishing horizons, roads and railroads. They represent an emotional idiom about a pensive and meditative world, the one he lives in, the one he wants us to visit, which is the one we would find in Ragusa, of course, but also the universal world that makes us all who we are. A train journey to the depths of the soul where every painting is nothing but a ticket to ride. 

Carlo Criscione’s painting will be on exhibition in New York in the autumn of 2005. For a preview or more information you can visit the artist’s site at www.carlocriscione.com or contact our editorial office.