Tamaqua artist featured at Phildelphia Museum of Art

For the next six months, art aficionados nationally and internationally will experience the interplay of light and color as interpreted in the works of a Tamaqua artist.

"Notations" by world-class painter Joseph Marioni was unveiled Nov. 14 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and will run until May 22, 2016.

Marioni, a New York City artist, set up Tamaqua operations in December 2004 after purchasing the former Independent Order of Odd Fellows meeting hall, later known as the Knights of Columbus building, 108 E. Broad St.

A force in monochromatic painting, Marioni is a member of the Radical Painting Group of New York. He works with acrylic on linen on stretcher. His work has been exhibited in important public and private venues worldwide. The showing in Philadelphia will give local art lovers a chance to review a sample of his creations dating from 2000 to 2015.

"At first appearing monochromatic (one color), Marioni's canvasses produce color sensations that shift with changes in light and viewpoint," states an announcement from the museum.

"In fact, each work features several distinct layers of acrylic paint of contrasting colors and intensities. Through unhurried contemplation, we can gain a deeper understanding that color is not a fixed entity, but rather subject to fluctuations of light and our perception."

In his own words, Marioni says a painting is "an object of light, bound by its architecture, in the time of its viewing."

Marioni feels that the primary function of painting is to advance the experience of color through the interaction of light and paint pigments.

"Building on experiments in American abstraction since the 1950s - particularly those of Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and Robert Ryman - Marioni's paintings inspire attentive, sustained looking," states a museum news release.

Marioni says painting is in a transition period.

"I am working within the general frame of reference that the practice of painting, as an art form, is in the midst of a significant change. Painters are moving away from storytelling in the composition of the picture-form and toward the structural identity of the painting's own painted-form," he explains.

In his artist's statement, Marioni explains that his paintings are predicated on what he calls archetypes.

"We recognize light only by the division of its wavelengths and in that regard I am working within the idea that the reason we distinguish four primary color groupings within the light spectrum is because they are archetypes.

"As archetypes, however, these colors do not have meaning in and of themselves and only acquire meaning in the context of how they are used. So, if you paint green in the same manner you paint red, it may indicate that you are drawing with paint rather than presenting the color."

Marioni has a unique take on art that emphasizes the beauty of simplicity.

"What we are beginning to realize is that when we have achieved the full realization of an actualized painting, when we have stripped away all the worldly décor of the day, and come to look upon the unadorned flesh of its body - just paint on canvas - what we see emanating from its body is dematerialized light," he says.

"The material reveals the immaterial, and the great paradox of our modernity is our expectation that it should be something other than what it is."

A tractor-trailer arrived in Tamaqua Nov. 9, to transport the oversized murals to Philadelphia.

"I'm hoping local residents will take the opportunity to schedule a trip as they have six months to do it," said Marioni, who recently opened his Tamaqua gallery as part of an artists' tour.