Longing For Water - Artist Talk
Longing for Water showcases artwork by Mateo Galvano spanning the last 20 years of his career, in which water has been a central source and inspiration. Growing up on Long Island in New York, Mateo often visited the beach, where he would admire the beauty of the water's reflective surfaces, catch the sun as it dips into the ocean at sunset, and watch as the waves crash to shore, watching brilliant hues of blue give way to bright colors of the sunset sky, and bubbly whites as the waves crest upon the shore. Galvano's observations, combined with his own relationship to his body within these spaces, ultimately become the final subjects of his abstractions in bodies of work including Book of Tides and Alluvium Variations. Motion, line, color, and textures become manifestations of this space combined, morphed, and layered in ways that blend elements of landscape painting with topographic maps to create an abstract visual that is uniquely Galvano's.
Other bodies of work draw from his 20 years living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where water was scarce, and monsoon rains would flood the washes and acequias in the valley. His body of work, Acequia, uses fine lines, undulating rhythms, and large flows of color to convey the elements of this landscape, where water was in flux and deemed a finite resource within the arid desert landscape.
Galvano's recent work has turned inward to the psyche, combining similar abstract elements and techniques in his past work with memory and internal reflection. Inhabiting yet another different American landscape in the hills of Athens, Ohio, where he currently resides, his work has taken on another shift where figures and abstraction collide. As he has begun to think about his own journey, faces, organic forms, and "internal psychological terrain" begin to emerge in works like Personae and The Floating World, and his series Vestiges. Memories of the past combine through the association of water to make something new.
Over the span of 20 years, Galvano has devoted his art practice to the exploration of various landscapes, highlighting the important role that water plays within our lives. Through abstraction, Galvano captures the emotion of water within the landscape, using vivid colors, visible brushstrokes, and wavy, flowing lines that mimic the visual properties of water’s presence. Drawing our attention to the importance of this resource in our world, Galvano's work holds a powerful space for reflection, where one can stand still, place oneself within the landscape, and be present.
