Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce Green Thumb, a solo exhibition of work by Stephen D’Onofrio. This is the Philadelphia-based artist’s fifth solo show with the gallery. Green Thumb is a visual exploration, where the boundaries between nature, art, and everyday design blur into a vibrant tapestry of color and form. This new body of work delves into the world of flowering vines and fruit bowls adorned with blooms, drawing inspiration from the rich tradition of European still life masters and the precision of scientific illustration.
Wild Roses
Acrylic on canvas
62 x 54”
Wild Roses In-Progress Detail
Watch:
Get a closer look at the exhibition on video
In Green Thumb, the artist seeks to unravel the delicate dance between botanical abundance and the meticulous order of nature. The winks and nods to genre-painting tropes are not without precedent. His inspirations in the art-historical canon: 17th-century Italian Giovanna Garzoni, painter of cherries and lemons in luscious still lives; 16th-century German apothecary Basilius Besler, botanical illustrator of myriad species; 19th-century English textile designer William Morris, master of dizzying pure pattern. D’Onofrio’s own still lives are not allegorical, and yet they speak of the memento mori tradition. “I’m borrowing the standard composition of a shallow still life that I think feels familiar to most people” against a dark background, D’Onofrio says. “They have this lasting power.”
“Green Thumb, a visual exploration where the boundaries between nature, art, and everyday design blur into a vibrant tapestry of color and form. This new body of work delves into the world of flowering vines and fruit bowls adorned with blooms, drawing inspiration from the rich tradition of European still life masters and the precision of scientific illustration.
I seek to unravel the delicate dance between botanical abundance and the meticulous order of nature. Each piece is a celebration of nature’s intricate details, rendered through a lens that merges classical elegance with contemporary familiarity. The flowering vines twist and curl with a life of their own, while fruit bowls overflow with the richness of both nature and imagination.”
Morning Glory’s
Acrylic on canvas
62 x 54”
Exhibition Install Images:
D'Onofrio's paintings are exquisitely evocative and delectably alive. A fruit bowl contains grapefruits and pomelos, whole and broken open to reveal juicy segments, while bees buzz languorously, rapturously around them and blooming lilies complete the picture. As a slice of life, it is tantalizing, sensory, electric: one can hear the amorous whir, smell floral ambrosia, and taste pungency. Elsewhere, morning glories or nasturtiums interlace their leafy vines, spreading them into a matrix that flirts, compositionally, with all-over pattern while remaining aware of the canvas’s edge.
Watermelon Fruit Pile Detail
Watermelon Fruit Pile
Acrylic on canvas
54 x 62”
Stephen D’Onofrio is a contemporary visual artist focused on painting. He received his BFA and MFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2013 and 2016, respectively. In 2018, D’Onofrio was a finalist for the prestigious Hopper Prize. He has exhibited extensively in venues across the country, including galleries in Dallas, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia. His work can be found in numerous private and public collections including Fidelity Investments, Estée Lauder, and the Clements Collection at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. D’Onofrio has lived and worked in Philadelphia since being awarded an artist residency in the city at Jasper Studios in 2017. His work is represented in the United States by Galleri Urbane, Dallas.
The artist’s thematic image-making is broadly characterized by an interest in the home decor market, the mass commodification of art, and the generic visual language that accompanies commercial design. His paintings explore the relationship between physical spaces and the objects we fill them with. Often alluding to typical domestic decor and household ornaments, his canvases make these inherently empty objects into simplified symbols and patterns that can then be rearranged and compressed to carry a formal sensibility. The “Produce(d) Paintings” series serves as an historic exemplar of still- life painting that is as old as the medium itself.
Currently, D’Onofrio addresses the idea of painting as ornament, incorporating stock subjects of landscape, still life, and portraiture becoming knickknacks into his lexicon. The painter distills, consolidates, and appropriates the overwhelming amount of generic design aesthetic in the commercial decor market. Rather than fight the inherent kitschiness of this visual language, he embraces the imagery so his canvases can, in turn, become a critique of the subject it represents.
Watch:
Stephen checks in from his Philidelphia studio to answer some questions about Title of Show
D’Onofrio’s technical aptitude—the slow layering and crisp edges—belies the critical message. Where does image-making end and pattern begin? Where does pattern end and kitsch begin? Where does idiosyncrasy end and genre begin? Where does genre end and commercialism begin? A cascading set of questions. Ultimately, Green Thumb is a comment on making, on consuming, on ornamenting—cheeky, wry, and tongue-in-cheek.
Studio In-Progress Detail
Plums, Peaches and Tulips
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 36”
Still life Grapefruit and Pomelos
Acrylic on canvas
46 x 42”
Studio In-Progress
Black Eyed Susans
Acrylic on canvas
46 x 42”
Nasturtiums
Acrylic on canvas
46 x 42”