Mary Chiaramonte – Featured artist

by Didi Menendez

Born in 1979 West Virginia, Mary Chiaramonte was raised helping her family live from and farm their land in an isolated area. She had no TV or other distractions and was encouraged to entertain herself with objects in nature. Left with the workings of her imagination and observations of the world around her, she translated her understanding into paintings. She continues this practice today, taking much of her momentum from the people that surround and affect her. Hanging between darkness and light, Chiaramonte’s figurative realism offers a narrative that echoes a provocative daydream, communicating both the human disposition and the mysteries therein. Her unending exploration surfaces in her paintings with an ambiguity that asks the viewer to wonder at our world as she does.

Our Very Own Secret Hideout | oil on panel | 16×20 inches | 2019

DO YOU EVER VENTURE OUT OF YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS TO TRY OUT NEW THINGS?

At the turn of 2018, I started working on pieces that mimic the idea of double exposures in photography. Photography has always been one of my greatest loves, and I want to incorporate some of its elements in addition to exploring two worlds at once. The sense of merging two spaces together appeals to that fascination of mine with time overlap like you may find in a dream, a hallucination, or a visit from your friendly neighborhood ghost. I am always trying to cross borders and keep from being hemmed-in by what I have done in the past by exploring more.

HOW MUCH TIME IS DEDICATED TO THE EXECUTION OF THE WORK BEFORE YOU ACTUALLY START THE PROCESS?

I very much appreciate this question because a good chunk of my time for each painting is spent pre-planning, and I’m happy this part of the artist’s work is recognized here. Everything starts inside my sketchbooks—I have too many of them—disorganized with information and thoughts from 2011 to 2018 in each. There is no order, and most of them are 80-percent what looks like the nonsensical writings of a madman and 20-percent sketches. I first have to construct the painting by my thoughts in writing. It is important for me to work with what I feel or have an emotion towards at the time so that I can maintain that spiritual energy for the work throughout its execution.

At times, I endlessly comb the internet in vain for a certain prop that I have in my mind to use in a painting, and when I’m exhausted with that, I typically end up creating my own as I have imagined it.

Chiaramonte is a member of the PoetsArtists community and is represented by Abend Gallery in Denver and 33 Contemporary in Chicago. A 2010 Master of Fine Arts graduate, Chiaramonte received the Best Graduate Thesis award from Radford University. Her work has been in numerous group exhibitions and collections throughout the U.S. and Europe. Her paintings have been published in American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur, American Artist Magazine, and PoetsArtists as well as the New York Times. She has also been the recipient of awards from the Portrait Society of America (2016) and the International ARC Salon competition (2018). Chiaramonte lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

Recently one of her paintings won an honorable mention in the ANJE at the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art juried by John Dalton.

Follow our Artsy page and see available works at 33 Contemporary Gallery.