Maggie Simonelli - Water and Pearls
Artists Reception Friday, June 3 + Saturday, June 4, 2022 7-9pm
Artists Statement:
Water & Pearls / encaustic paintings Maggie Simonelli
Opalescence of crushed pearls, warmth of peach orange resonates from coral, translucence of beeswax, turquoise floating in a sea of blues, pale golds, shimmering silvers, these are the materials of Maggie Simonelli's paintings that speak to the heart through the senses.
Enchanted by themes of nature, love and compassion in the series Water & Pearls Maggie Simonelli embraces the feminine, beauty with highly decorative style and sensuality of touch. Alchemy of elements are “slow-cooked” on double boiler creating handmade paints of beeswax. Rich, luscious surfaces of translucent paint are interlaced with pale gold, silver and oxidizing copper leafs on wood panels with Simonelli's signature encaustic “burn-in” technique. Painting with the nacre of real pearls in Pearl within Pearl the softness of the color has a shell like effect encompasses the viewer in pale coral pearl cloud. Continually layering into wax, Simonelli carves out arabesque shapes and lines with ceramic tools, layering colors with iridescence of imbedded metals.
“Love isn't the work of the tender and the gentle; Love is the work of wrestlers. The one who becomes a servant of lovers is really a fortunate sovereign.
Don't ask anyone about Love; ask Love about Love.
Love is a cloud that scatters pearls.” ― Rumi
Simonelli says "As these past two years have brought us indoors and within, the paintings reflect this quiet contemplation of our own nature and connections to nature that brought solace in the face of uncertainty." The Heart of Water, Blue is a mediation on water as the compassionate heart of nature and mirror reflection into our own hearts as we dealt with loss. The fear, tragedy, death and the uncertainty, brought us a new expanded awareness of our relationships to each other and to the sacredness of life." Simonelli embraces the decorative, playing on the liberation of beauty, sacred love and divinity of the feminine in a living nature. Simonelli paintings return to reverence of Nature and sacred love . Adorn the paintings, finishing with soft, velvety shimmering colors from DIOR and MAC cosmetics incorporating titles to play into a created sacred love mythology. Maggie Simonelli painting process is a devotional contemplation, a communication of beauty and nature of the human spirit through the hand.
Maggie Simonelli "detail, Love is a Cloud that Scatters Pearls” encaustic, crushed pearls, oyster shells, coral & glass pigments, MAC eye shadow, aluminum leaf, bee pollen and pigments on wood panel single panel 20" x 20”
About Maggie
Simonelli’s artwork has been commissioned for private and corporate lobbies including Kirkland & Ellis LLP and David Rockwell both in NYC and the InterContinental Hotel in Boston. Simonelli has lectured on her art for the NY Society of Cosmetic Chemists, COLOR 2020 and #BeyondTheBrief 2019 at Peclers Paris, The Artist in the Studio series for 92nd Street Y all in NYC. She has been interviewed for Intelligentsia Journal (2019) online magazine, COLOR a Virtual Conference for the NY Society of Cosmetic Chemists, NY, on radio From the Artist’s Perspective (2016, WOMR,) and Be Happy Dammit ( 2007, Sirius Radio). Reviews of Simonelli’s works appear in Provincetown Banner, New York Magazine, Artscope, Easthampton Star, Southampton Press, Journal of Medicinal Health, and Hamptons.com. Maggie Simonelli lives and works in New York City.