Essay: Peter van Dyck/Carolyn Pyfrom Exhibition
by Anthony Mastromatteo
(The Florence Academy of Art @ MANA)
Peter Van Dyke, ‘Corner Store, Dusk’. Oil on linen, 24” x 27”, 2014
The realist painting is always a painting. Always art. Always a grand deception of color suspended in oil manipulated by craft and concept masquerading as person, place or thing. Great realist painting, therefore, is first and foremost great painting executed by painters who speak through their control of the possibilities and the limits of the medium. Peter van Dyck and Carolyn Pyfrom are painters making paintings, and they never let the viewer forget this reality. Linear perspective sags under the weight of their investigation of the world. The image, its very nature, is called into question through the repeated use of mirrors and the complex visual narratives created by their use. Color as mixed on their palettes stretches the visual experience beyond the expected and the usual. Peter van Dyck and Carolyn Pyfrom are painters exhibiting control who, as a result, incarnate a vision in paint that offers the viewer a revelatory insight into subjects and moments that might be considered common or ordinary. Their paintings reveal them as extraordinary.
Words by Anthony Mastromatteo.
