Artist Review
The scope of Giovanni Arcamone’s artistic repertoire includes multifaceted mediums with a particular warmth in his paintings. He includes oil on traditional canvas, watercolors and acrylic paint on textures such as slate and tile, using brush and palette knife. These various techniques bring about a body of work that allows the viewer to not only see, but feel the environment he is conveying to his audience.
The paintings he creates delivers a nostalgic correspondence of his life and memories that primarily involve the looking back to Italy. He also is able to convey from his present life direct observations that include his various travels in U.S.
The painting of the Barber Shop in Italy is a gripping, warm, and romantic rendition. The use of the oil and palette knife bring about an actual sense of being in the presence of these old stones that have been in that small Italian town for centuries. Though the barber shop door is closed, there is a direct appeal of invitation. The viewer wants to stop, wants to look. The number at the door is 31, and it is memorable. The bars in the window do the opposite of what their function normally is, they somehow convey welcoming.
The body of work Giovanni has created brings about this similar sense. Also, unique to his subject matter, there are numerous paintings with closed doors, that nonetheless have a warmth and welcoming. The painting of the Farmhouse with Red Door, The Cantina in Tuscany, the paintings that include Four Doors, and Two Doors, these each deliver a romantic welcome to Giovanni’s Italian heritage and memories. They are paintings that are simple and remarkable environments. The renditions of the paintings take a straightforward subject such as buildings and doors, but deliver them in a historic and deeply personal fashion. It causes the viewer to have to think of their own life and places that have deeply personal meanings for them.
Giovanni can look at the narrow and also pan out to enrapture a larger environment but still deliver his unique hand in his painting workmanship of warmth and invitation. The painting of The Sunset at Sea Isle is acrylic on slate. He includes the bay, marshland, the far off tree line, and the changing colored skyline. He also includes a specific reference of the dock, just a small reminder of the personal presence he is able to convey. The Alley in Tuscany invites the viewer into the narrow corridor of ancient Italy. There is only the architecture, no skyline. The stones and subtle hints of the flowers faintly painted are a reminder of those who tend to them in the present, which seemingly speaks about the past.
The painting of The Island of Procida, done in oil with brush delivers the heritage of Italy and the artists connection to the land and people. There is a catholic dome in the background, there is a multilayered sky of deep blues, transitional tones to white thin clouds. The various shapes of homes, stacked one upon another, originating at the sea. The boats along the coast are not vacation vessels, they are the people’s boats of commerce, their way of life, scattered along the shore as though the work day just finished.
It is impossible to separate Giovanni’s joy of life, from his observations and deep personal connection in his works, either acrylic, watercolors, oils, using various methods of delivery: brush, knife, paper, canvas, stone, tile. He creates works of art that will always be timeless and truthful. He takes the hardest parts of painting, the use of great technique and the ability to pour one’s passion and emotions into a piece effortlessly. His works are both subtle and extremely captivating. He renders the ordinary things of life into beautiful moments in history. These are Giovanni’s paintings.






