Painting Wherever Beauty Takes Him

July 15, 2018

landscape paintings - Marc Dalessio - FineArtConnoisseur.com — “East Hampton from the Jitney Stop,” 2018, oil on canvas, 8 x 12 in.

Marc Dalessio, a leading plein air painter, has returned to Sag Harbor, New York, to paint locally as he has done many years since he first came in 1999. Grenning Gallery is showing a select group of major works from his year of creating landscape paintings around the globe.

From Grenning Gallery:

Although he is based mostly in Florence, Dalessio paints in Ireland, California, Cape Cod, Maine, Wales, Austria … basically wherever the beauty takes him. As an environmentalist, he is following his true inspiration.

Dalessio’s first love, the California coast, is found in the anchor painting “Big Sur” (above). This grand and sweeping view is a feat of contemporary painting, with its rich foreground in shadow, and subtle and true color of the distant water and sky. The articulated observations of the rocky coast are both intriguing and bold at the same time. It’s a powerful painting to stand in front of — which is exactly how the great landscape paintings of the late 19th century were able to convince our leaders to set aside huge swaths of land. It was the Hudson River Valley paintings of the west that inspired the creation of our federal and state parks. Artists, and their observations, are the true leaders, which is why one needs to vote with one’s dollars to encourage artists to keep painting these spectacular natural places.

Shifting to the local paintings, we are very pleased that Dalessio was able to spend several weeks painting local scenes — ranging from Main Street Sag Harbor, to Indian Wells Beach. One especially interesting painting, “East Hampton from the Jitney Stop,” recalls the work of another famous American painter from over a 100 years ago — Childe Hassam.

His delight in painting, drawing, and etching the great elms lining the streets of East Hampton are well known to the followers of the great American impressionist. Here, Dalessio has been able to capture the same view with convincing accuracy and a brightness and lightness that could only be from the 21st century. Only after 25 years of painting full-time could an artist come to town and paint one or two local landscapes a day during the weeks leading up to his show and deliver such an amazing collection of works.