Artist's Statement

Joseph Di Bella

Making art for me draws from dual feelings of familiarity and strangeness about the present and what came before it.  In a way I try to claim a lost heritage that is too complex for comprehension, something removed from the present, yet an integral part of my being and thinking.  It is in the mesh of cultures over time, that incomplete synthesis, that I identify.  Particularly in the art and architecture of Sicily, the island of my ancestors , I see a collision of systems and influences. Ideas, then, for my work stem from my ethnic roots where classical Greek and Roman, Byzantine, and Arabic traits among others offer richness and paradox. And from here I extrapolate to universal themes: How is individuality asserted when the way one thinks is shaped by the symbols, words, beliefs and very gestures of those who preceded? There is no closed and finite matrix. Each reference is informed by another. While I ponder my unique perch on a vast family tree, I wonder about the countless, nameless who emerged before me, and that, in time to come, I will be submerged among them.

For these reasons I often set up situations of opposing elements, fields split in half or images divided.  My recent works are visual constructions that pin one configuration or design against another in a tentative hold with allusions to icon format,  architectural styles and prayer screens.

As with images and patterns I prefer to mix media and techniques.  Acrylic, egg tempera, dry pigments, colored pencils, solvents and metal powders are applied layer upon layer with brushes, trowels, scrapers and  fabricated stamps.