THOMAS SARRANTONIO
Thomas Sarrantonio
ARTIST STATEMENT
About
​Thomas Sarrantonio studied Painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia where his teachers included Wil Barnet and Sidney Goodman. He also holds degrees in Biology and English. His paintings have been exhibited widely and he is the recipient of numerous honors including a Pollock-Krasner Award, a Visiting Artist Residency in Normandy, France and an Artist Residency Fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ballycastle Ireland. He taught Art and Art History at SUNY New Paltz for over thirty years and he maintains a studio in Rosendale, New York where he lives with his wife and children.​
Paintings
The paintings of Thomas Sarrantonio seek to mediate between realms of external perception and internal reflection. They present themselves as meditations on nature and self. Choosing humble, often overlooked subject matter, such as the overgrown grasses at the edge of a field, he attempts to translate the dynamic processes of Nature into the stasis of physical matter on a painted surface. Small works are produced directly from Nature while large paintings are studio productions that utilize memory, experience, imagination and conceptual ideas to negotiate the terrain of contemporary painting. The paintings are offered to the viewer as templates to provoke active participation in the process of seeing and quiet contemplation of the mysteries of consciousness.