Studio Hart is proud to present its next exhibit Everything is Beautiful, and Nothing Hurts: Craig LaRotonda and Maria Pabico LaRotonda. These two artists, who are a married couple, create art that reflects a deep and passionate bond. The work is darkly compelling, passionate and frightful, rich and mysterious.
The LaRotondas both live and work in Buffalo, New York.
Everything is Beautiful, and Nothing Hurts opens with an artists reception on Friday, February 5 from 6 to 9pm. The show runs from February 5 through 27, 2016.
Craig LaRotonda
Craig LaRotonda has developed an incomparable brand of neo surrealist figurative work imbued with dark beauty, emotion, and mystery.
His works are produced using variety of mediums including oil, acrylic, gold leaf, wood, paper, wax, and found-objects to create paintings and sculptures that are richly layered and provocative. His signature iconic style depicts both the carnal and the spiritual - the profane and the sublime, all realized with a contemporary twist. His surreal and distorted creatures are captured in a timeless dream space — surviving the brutality and beauty of existence.
LaRotonda's award winning art appears in television and five feature-length motion pictures as well as published in print.
Revelation Studios – LaRotonda’s fine art and commercial studio – was established on the West Side of Buffalo in 1995. Craig and the business moved for an eight year stay in San Francisco, and then continued to NYC. Currently working out of his hometown of Buffalo, Craig produces his artwork for both national and international exhibits, for private collectors, and creates commercial illustrations for clients that include Time Magazine, Playboy, The New York Times, Random House, The Village Voice, and others.
Collections of his work can be found in France, Germany, Norway, Mexico, Canada, and throughout the United States. Exhibitions include solo shows in, Los Angeles, New York, Buffalo, San Francisco and Paris.
Maria Pabico LaRotonda
Maria Pabico LaRotonda is a graphic designer and a digital media artist. Coming from a ne art background with a graphic design concentration, she uses the computer and graphic software to create her digital paintings. Each work is created in Photoshop as a multi-layered - sometimes 100 layers deep - digital collage with gures and objects Pabico LaRotonda has photographed or collected over the years. Creating these otherworldly compositions, Maria shows her subjects placed in environments that are unsettling, creating an uneasiness in her images. There is a dream-like quality to the work, making any presence of danger seem far-off in the distant for these subjects in their subconscious exploration of the literal and metaphorical.
Maria has shown at galleries throughout WNY as well as the LACDA Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.
When not creating artwork, Pabico LaRotonda works full-time as a graphic / web designer at her company, Robot Kitten Designs. She is in her 18th year as an adjunct professor and teaches at three local colleges in the ne art studio and graphic / web design departments. Maria shares her creative space with her husband – fine artist Craig LaRotonda – their German Shepherd (India), and their tiger cat (Sebastian).