Art League Names Featured Artist for February
 |
| Leo Mazzeo 'Some Late Afternoon' |
Mazzeo will be showing a selection of still life oil paintings, featuring new work executed with a palette knife on a pumiced masonite surface. A preview of his work may be seen by visiting www.lmazzeo.com. The show is open to the public during regular bank hours.
Mazzeo has won awards with both pastel and oils. He has been a member of the Housatonic Valley Art League and is an elected member of the Kent (Conn.) Art Association, an honor requiring an artist to be juried into a number of the association's shows. He is also a member of the Columbia County Council on the Arts in Hudson, N.Y., and has been juried into the council's annual show twice to date.
"Until last year, I've always worked on smaller surfaces in a rather tight, representational style," said Mazzeo of his current work. "Then I began working larger, with a looser, more gestural hand. Now, I've begun to work smaller again, but still loosely on a rough, pumiced surface with a palette knife.
"It's as if I expanded everything to larger than life, then put it all back together small again, only the work refused to return to its previous state. Though still basically representational, the new work often leans towards the abstract and is generally much more colorful with greater contrast than my previous work."
The Housatonic Valley Art League is a nonprofit organization with nearly 200 members from the Berkshires and beyond. Besides sponsoring the annual scholarship show for high school seniors, the league holds workshops, critiques, and demonstrations by nationally renowned art educators, and juried/member art exhibits in the summer and fall. Information about the art league is available at www.hvart.org or P.O. Box 296, Great Barrington, MA 01230.
