Laura DiNello Canvas Mosaic
Untitled (Couple with Wine Glass)
Mixed Media on Canvas
Two elegantly elongated figures fill this richly patterned composition by Laura DiNello. A woman, holding a glass of red wine in a long dark glove, leans toward her handsome companion, whose sharply profiled face resemble a crescent moon. Piano-key patterns sweep across both figures, while flowers, geometric, forms, stripes, and small jewel-like accents animate the surface. DiNello here continues her traditional method of incorporating musical themes superimposed onto the human form, and here we see strips of musical score focused upon the couple’s gently intertwined hands. Her play on music is intentional, as she conveys the human body in many of her pieces as musical instruments to be enjoyed. The musical theme continues through even to the tattoo on the gentleman’s bicep. Subtle arrows are showing the direction of the connection between the two subjects.
Laura DiNello
A self-taught American artist working out of Charleston, SC, Laura DiNello is know for her highly distinctive figurative works combining painting, collage, and a mosaic-like treatment of canvas. Raised in Chicago in an Italian-American family, DiNello moved to Savannah, Georgia, as a young woman and became closely associated with the city’s artistic community. She subsequently moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where she continues her career.
Her imagery is inspired by mid-century European cafe and street scenes. Her paintings frequently inhabit a world of elegantly stylized figures, intimate encounters, music, cafes, and urban life — a leisurely and romantic world that DiNello has acknowledged contrasts with her own restless creative temperament. She describes art as a “manic love” and the need to continue working as an almost irresistible impulse.
DiNello developed her unusual technique in 1989 after cutting apart one of her own paintings and attempting to reconstruct it. The experiment evolved into a signature method in which a painted image is transformed through small pieces and layers of canvas, cometimes combined with materials such as photographs, maps, postcards, sheet music, and glitter. Although the resulting surface can resemble ceramic or glass mosaic, the work remains fundamentally constructed from canvas. For DiNello, this process is integral to the finished image: she has said that her paintings do not feel complete until they have undergone this transformation.
Laura DiNello in her Charleston, SC Gallery
