Thesis
From the moment I met my teacher in high school, I knew my purpose was to help others in the same way he helped me. It was in the eighth grade, after winning my first Gold Key in the Scholastics Art and Writing competition, that I knew my talents were in fact authentic. This gave me the confidence to continue taking art for the remaining years of high school and then go on to college and study art. Still to this day, if you walk into my parents’ house you can observe the numerous pieces created in the dawn of my art career. Unfortunately, like so many others I have encountered in my life, I have a feeling that my parents sometimes no longer really understand the art I am now creating. They are supportive parents who have always backed most of my decisions but if you ask them if the art from high school and the art now are stronger, you may not receive the correct answer. I am very passionate about my art and am now making art for a stronger purpose, whether that purpose is documenting my daughter’s anxiety or showing my audience the brutalities of the meat industry, all extremely meaningful to me as an individual. I often wonder what I may be doing with my life if I hadn’t won that award in the eighth grade and met Mr. Allen. He was at the time one of the most established high school art teachers in the state winning numerous accolades yearly in award shows such as the Scholastics Art and Writing high school competition. He was so much more than just that though. He gave me an environment I could feel comfortable in at a very intimidating place, Brockton High School. Brockton is notorious for high crime rates and drug overdoses, but these negative statistics are outweighed by being one of the most famous fighting cities in the world. It produced not one, but two world champion boxers in history; Rocky Marciano, the only heavyweight to ever retire undefeated, and Marvin Hagler, one of the fiercest middleweights to ever put on a pair of gloves. The school is the largest high school in the state and one of the largest in the entire country housing up to five thousand students at its maximum capacity. Being as small as I was going to a school of this magnitude was intimidating as ever. Trying to fit in was not an easy feat and I was soon being picked on and bullied by kids who had cliques of their own. At this time was when I noticed myself drifting away from the team sports like hockey and baseball, two sports I played my whole life, and spending more of my time in the art department. I took to black and white photography, ceramics, and of course the studio courses where I could retreat to and draw/paint at my convenience. There was not a day at that school between the years of 2001 to 2005 that I wasn’t involved in those classes. At one point I was even suspended, the only time I was ever suspended in twelve years of grade-school. I wrote a fake pass to leave a study period just so I could retreat to my safe place, Mr. Allen’s class. He always gave me advice on both my art work and in my personal life, even when I didn’t realize advice was being given to me at the time. I remember walking into his class on multiple occasions with black eyes from being beat up by these bullies and him having compassionate conversations letting me know I had someone I could always talk to. Me being me, I always shied away and never really told him what was going on, probably in fear that I would receive repercussions from these same horrible people. Simultaneously at this time I met someone who would become my best friend and would give me the confidence to stand up for myself rather than retreating to my safe place. Jesse was a boxer who brought me up to Petronelli’s Gym, one of the two boxing gyms in the city that was once the gym of Marvin Hagler. It wasn’t long before I found another hidden talent and now had two avenues to aid me through my struggles. I knew with my abilities in the arts and my personality as an individual I could eventually do the same for so many students. Not only could I pass my knowledge in the arts, but I could also share my experiences growing up in a rough city and making the best of my situation. This was all thanks to Mr. Allen, the teacher who changed my life for the better with giving me that safe place to grow as an artist and Jesse, the popular kid who took me under his wing and taught me how to defend myself through the art of boxing.
As an undergrad, I absorbed just about everything the college could offer. I wanted to be a well-rounded individual who would be able to teach in any medium, which inevitably would better my chances of getting hired. I also feel that the more knowledge we contain in our lives, the better our chances of making good art really are. If we can paint an image to look exactly like a photo we may be looked at as talented by the norm, but it is when we can make art that moves people both visually and mentally that we appear adept to our fellow scholars. With that being said, I congregated as much knowledge in the arts as I could in my stay as an undergrad student to ensure that I could not only copy something visually, but also move my audience to other levels of euphoria with my art. The artists that are considered to be the greatest to have ever lived and who paved the way for the arts that exist today were my biggest influences in my undergraduate journey. It was observing and learning from these artists that allowed me to branch out and loosen my style enough to be where I am at present-day. At this point I couldn’t see the value in abstract and would not even think about exploring that realm just yet. Like all of the great abstract artists in history, it was my responsibility to be able to comfortably draw and paint in a photorealistic manner before allowing myself the freedom to branch out. This was the time in my education that I could intensify and sharpen everything I learned in high school. I was always motivated by my professors, constantly keeping at least one as a mentor at all times. I would feed off of the positive energy and knowledge that was offered to me by my teachers, and never once did I forget that I was the student and them the instructor.
In 2013 I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree from Bridgewater State University and immediately found a job teaching at Dighton Rehoboth Regional High School, the school I completed my student teaching semester at. This was a huge accomplishment for me seeing that I’ve had multiple teachers in the past who told me things like, “good luck finding a job as an art teacher.” I could now rub it in the faces of these teachers that I was employed right after graduation in a field I was very passionate about. Soon after I applied for graduate school and began my next journey.
It was in graduate school that I found out painting was my preferred medium of expression. I watched myself grow as an artist through my painting over the course of about three years. I would also meet another mentor at this time that opened my eyes to a whole other world. I took my first graduate studio class with this woman and was warned before I even stepped into this class to not displease her. People told me on multiple occasions how dreadfully mean she could be if she disliked you. Of course, I took these warnings with a grain of salt and figured she couldn’t be that bad. I’ll never forget the first time Mercedes Nunez waked into the classroom. “What the Fuck!” This was the first thing to come out of her mouth and right away I knew I found someone I could relate to. To some of us this was intimidating but to someone who grew up in a lower-middle class Italian and Greek family where swearing was a way of expression, this happened to be music to my ears. Although she was of Cuban descent, it also comforted me that she had the same appearance and demeanor of my short, feisty mother. It was only a matter of time before I was showcasing my skills as an artist to her, always remaining humble in the process. When she would give me feedback I listened and made the necessary changes to show her that I respected her opinion as an artist. She also made great recommendations on artists that I either had never heard of or just never had the chance to look at in depth. I have to admit I owe so much to this woman for her ability to mold me into the painter I am today. When I walked into her class I was hesitant on making certain decisions on my own and was an overall compressed artist in my abilities. She allowed me to see past all of that and to wander into the realm of Abstract Expressionism, a realm I never would have imagined myself in even five years ago. Most people wouldn’t think anything of it, but as a teacher myself I now see her as nothing short of a genius. Her technique was perfect in how she allowed me to express myself through my art in my own way at first, having me make slight changes in my aesthetics on the way. They started out as illustrative paintings, influenced mostly by Sue Coe, that told a shocking story of the wretched happenings of the world. Pollution, the abuse of innocent animals, and obesity are just a few topics that I touched upon in the process. I completed two, four-piece series, all black and white, to signify the untold horror that goes on in the world on a daily basis that so many of us turn a blind eye to just to please our bellies. Both series seemed to tell an untold story, each piece containing hidden scripture telling truths of the industry, hectic imagery that makes the eye bounce around the page like the heart of a poor swine on its way to slaughter. There is also a spooky past-time feeling at first site due to the dark monotone values with a bit of a sour yellow light shining in trying to get the person’s attention in the composition as if to say, “stop ignoring what you know is morally wrong”.
“Lete Concentration Camp”
Sue Coe
1991-2005
As time went on she encouraged me to blend the lines and loosen up my brush strokes The second series touched upon the cruelties around the world including poaching, finning, and overall extinction. This series was done on black paper with white charcoal, gesso, and inks giving it a higher contrast and a bolder appeal to the audience. Like the other series, this series has complex compositions that narrate the cruel truths that are happening around the world. This series also has hidden scripture to go along with the stories in each piece.
Gerald Schifone
“Friends not Food”
2015
Gerald Schifone
“Extinction”
2016
As my paintings started to progress, so did the compositions and the quality of paint. They became less figurative, more expressive, and more stylized to me as the artist. I was also urged by my professors to expand on my palette around this time, which made for a great aggregate of paintings with a broad spectrum of hues.
Starting off making series like “Friends not Food” and “Flesh”, I was able to explore with various mediums and techniques, while using subject matter that I felt strongly about. Things like extinction, animal cruelty, eating disorders, and worldwide pollution were my major concerns throughout my exploration. I was also expanding on technique, mediums, and on various surfaces at this time in my studies. I am constantly on the hunt for ways
to make me feel passionate about what I am working on and if the subject matter is feeble so will be the art. I remember at times creating art that I felt strongly about and the professors sitting me down and aiding me in seeing the art through the eyes of the critics. Sometimes we feel so passionate about certain subjects that it blinds us to the world outside of our studios. This just brings me back to why our teachers and mentors are so important to us even as adults. At any point in our careers there is always room for growth and improvement, and it is important to never feel as if we are better than one another but to use each other to reinforce our passions. This will always be my mentality as an educator in the arts. By the time I ventured into my third and fourth series, Mercedes was not advising me to take more chances and really start to blend the boundaries in my paintings. If she had started out telling me to take these chances when I first met her, I most likely would have disregarded her opinion and not taken the necessary chances to better my art. This is what separates Mercedes from other professors in my opinion. She understands that building someone up doesn’t happen overnight. Every student learns different but all students can learn given the necessary time and effort.
It was in my flesh series that I began working on mammoth sized canvases. By this point I was fully comfortable in my new-found abilities, and really loved painting in a large aggressive manner. Much like boxing, this was a way for me to let loose and be rid of all of my built-up aggression through my art. I could zone out for four or five hours and get an entire giant painting done, sometimes even surprising myself in the end. I was in a way painting on autopilot in the same manner we do when we drive for long distances on the highway, and sometimes wonder if it was even really me who painted this mountainous painting in front of me. I touched upon certain human imperfections through the beautiful hues of their skin, even in some circumstances when some of these flaws are presumed to be disgusting. This was a great way for me to explore my palette while painting my preferred subject, flesh.
“Photos from Flesh series”
It was in the series “My Girl and I” that I finally felt like I was reaching the climax in the graduate program at BSU. This was when I started to move away from the problems around the world and really started to confine my topic on myself. I consider the art from this point on to be a self-portrait of myself as a whole.
Gerald Schifone
“Anxiety 3” (My Girl and I)
2017
Gerald Schifone
“Anxiety 1” (My Girl and I)
2017
Gerald Schifone
“Anxiety 2” (My Girl and I)
2017
Anxiety- “A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.” This is a serious medical condition that I have been fighting with my entire life. I still remember vividly the anxiety that tormented me growing up. These anxious moments have been engraved in my brain, molded the way I’ve developed as a person, and have negatively affected my ability to cope with my struggles of every-day life.
These days I am overwhelmed by love when I look at my daughter. I look at her like a Goddess because she is pure perfection in every way. Although I see her as quintessential, her perfection seems tainted by the genetics I have passed down to her. She has already started biting her fingers when her anxiety starts to overwhelm her, she gets anxious bursts of anger when she can’t figure something out, and is examining other children her age with the same wonderstruck glance I am sure I once had.
This series was a way for me to ambiguously get my point across to my audience. The paintings are portraits cropped closely on substantially large canvases to show the beauty and importance of this child in my life. I transformed her from my daughter to a god-like cherub to the audience by painting her in this manner. The paronomasia in this piece is the style in which it was painted and also the fact that her hands are in or around her mouth in each painting both signifying the anxiety we both hold. Although I slightly changed my color palette throughout the series, I made sure that each piece was painted in a belligerent manner with brush strokes going in all directions creating a form of dissonance to the audience. The bold contrast and strong lighting create angst to the viewer and sets the stage for the dramatic series. Although my daughter is the subject in these painting, I feel as if this series along with the series to come are an introspective of myself. It is an investigation of myself through my daughter and the circumstances that have molded me into the person I am today.
For me, there is beautiful glow to these paintings that truly warm my heart, yet at the same time, a sense of darkness that I find evocative and frigid, the same darkness that comes along with anxiety and mental disorders.
Gerald Schifone
“Breaking Away” (My girl and I)
2018
When I was finally satisfied with the “My Girl and I” series, I felt I absolutely needed to investigate a void in my life that was devouring a large portion of my happiness. A built-up aggression that I no longer had a coping mechanism for and needed to get out. Throughout my years as a graduate student at BSU, I was living a double life, traveling the country and building a name for myself as a nationally ranked boxer as well. After numerous achievements in boxing such as a bronze medal in the national golden gloves and winning the New England title four times, but coming up short on the 2012 Olympic qualifiers, I decided I would go professional and try my luck on that aspect of the sport. It was just a few fights into my professional career that I went in for an annual MRI checkup when the Neurologist found an abnormal negative space in the center of my brain. This was something that the doctor had heard about through his studies, but expressed in his thirty years of practice never witnessed it. From that day forward my life would be changed forever. I would never be approved by the boxing commission to fight again. Although this was sickening to find out, at the same time it felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. For years I fought internally with the fact that I would have to sacrifice something in my life to find the necessary time to make money for my family and focus on what was important. I also knew that if I was to continue boxing that like most of the retired fighters I encountered, would pay for it later in life with serious health issues. Needless to say, the abuse that a fighter’s mind and body endures over the years, even the best fighters, is not worth the money that can possibly be made. The sport of professional boxing in my mind was a gamble, and now it was a gamble that I could walk away from and be able to sleep at night knowing I didn’t have the option to continue even if I wanted to. My life’s focus would now be on my art and my family, the two things that inevitably made me the happiest anyway.
This was the only way of coping with a situation that completely transfigured my life. Since the time of the MRI back in 2016, I have been constantly battling with my inner demons and the low points of my depression have gone to a level I didn’t know existed. As soon as I feel like I am consistently happy with the way my life has turned out for the moment, boxing will get brought up sending me into a downward spiral of complete depression. It could be something as simple as watching it on television or seeing an old friend and them saying, “how come you stopped boxing? You had everything it takes to be a world champion.” Another thing that makes it so tough on me is the fact that physically I feel like I can still take on the world, but I know that a brain injury can never be repaired and that I am just damaged goods. A decade of training daily, traveling the country, feeling like a celebrity amongst my friends and family, to now searching for that same high again like a drug addict looking for my next fix. I have since seen multiple psychiatrists to help me cope with the mental struggles I face on a daily basis, but nothing seems to take away the pain. Nothing seems to numb the absence of the high that I once felt time and time again of having my hand raised and hearing the cheers of the crowd roar at the end of each bout. The gritty persona by each fighter in the locker room before being hailed to the ring for battle. The both wise and ferocious words spoken by the trainers to mentally prepare us to fight for our lives while still remembering everything we worked on in the months prior to those moments. In these moments we were gladiators preparing to fight for our lives. The feeling of being invincible is something I felt when I stepped into that ring. I’ll never forget the adrenaline pumping through my veins and the feeling of anxiety being overcome by confidence. I could proudly say that for five years straight there was not one man that could beat me in the ring in all of New England, and the losses that I took on the national level were coin tosses as well. I was on my way to being the next great champion from Brockton Massachusetts, or at least I thought I was.
Although I could now aim my focus on what I feel is most important, the simple fact that I have limited options on something that basically made me the person I am today was astonishing. The word “no” is not a word that I easily cope with. The depression and anxiety began to consume my life at this point. I was moping around the house unmotivated most days. The only thing that could possibly save me at this point would be a new beginning or something that would refresh me as an individual.
We booked a trip to Rome to help me get over this deepened depression I was feeling. I knew this was the perfect trip to get inspired for my final semester as a grad student. That is exactly what the trip did.
Rome is one of the most inspirational places for any artist to go to if they are trying to widen their horizons. All week long we saw some of the most amazing works of art from Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s “David” to more present day works that shocked the world like Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”, both shocked the world equally for different reasons in history. It was also here that I came up with multiple lesson plans for my high school students. I observe the artwork in depth and try to break it down into steps that I can explain to my students with ease, then I relate it to a project with materials that we have available to us in the school setting.
The National Gallery of Modern Art is where I pirated my most influential ideas for my series that lied ahead. “Big Red P18”, by Alberto Burri, is the piece that inspired me to take the approach I did on my final paintings. Although I don’t know the true meaning behind the work, the violent fluidity of the plastic, accompanied with the jarring radiant color red gave me the same frenzied peace that the sport of boxing once did. The large black negative space in the painting resembled, in my mind, a black hole much like the one that I now had figuratively in the center of my brain and literally had with the absence of boxing in my life. Needless to say, this painting spoke to me on many levels and I interpreted the painting as if it was personalized for my life, the way art should all be interpreted in my opinion.
Alberto Burri
Big Red P18
1964
I knew I could take away from Burri’s art and make it my own with a much broader color palette aimed more toward the colors of flesh, the values I knew I enjoyed using after experimenting with in an earlier series in the graduate program called “Flesh”. I could now take my paintings to that next level and really manifest what it was that I wanted to portray in my art work. I wanted to make a gruesome series that would illustrate a story, like much of my art work does, but have it less emblematic and more intellectual. I want my viewers to look at my paintings and create their own stories in the same manner I did when I dissected “Big Red P18”.
My story would show the ghastly reality of the sport I love so much, the side that only the families of the fighters ever really witness. I would also show the barbaric happenings at factory farms that in reality is sealing our fate with masses of pollution being admitted by the overloads of methane pumped into the atmosphere. This sequence of paintings allowed me to take all the research accomplished on the cruel realities of the way we treat animals just to overindulge, and correlate this with the same way boxers destroy both their mind and bodies for our entertainment. They sacrifice everything in their lives for a measly paycheck that at the end of the day pays less than minimum wage. The repulsive reality behind the corruption in professional contact sports and factory farming are really one in the same and both need to be brought to light. With their strong similarities, my available reference material, and my ability to paint on a professional level, it felt as if it was my responsibility to advocate for what I know is right.
Another artist I have always been inspired by is Jenny Saville. First and fore most I fell in love with the way she paints the flesh of her subjects. I aspire to paint the human in the same manner completely attacking the canvas with a wide spectrum of hues to portray the figure to the best of my abilities. Another thing I enjoy about her work is the simple fact that she paints anybody and everybody and truly does not discriminate her models. One thing she does that I also do in some of my paintings is she chooses to leave sections unfinished and just drawn in with contour lines and nothing more. The way she blends the figures together slightly in areas is another technique I see overlapping in my own paintings. These were techniques I was using before really observing her work in full, but once I noticed her use of the same techniques it was reassuring to me that I was in fact on the right track. I would say that her and Burri were my two biggest influences for this last series.
Jenny Saville
“Oxyrhynchus”
2014
“A Fighter’s Chance” is the focal point to my final exhibition. At eight feet wide and four feet high, this prodigious piece is mighty in both appearance and emotion. Within the painting, two people are intertwined with the horror of the manic composition composed of hanging animal corpses with open lacerations. One of the two is a trainer who sacrifices so much of their own lives to hopefully make money if the fighter is successful down the road. Although a trainer and a fighter may become close in their years together, at the end of the day the fighter is only a paycheck for the trainer, much like the relationship of a farmer to their cattle, swine, chickens, etc. It wasn’t until I suffered my brain injury that I felt like I no longer benefited my trainer and in a sense was on the chopping block like an animal going in for slaughter. The other person in the painting is me, battling through the carcasses to get to my trainer who is patiently waiting for my arrival, something that I will inevitably never be able to achieve with the injury I have suffered. Notice also that the leather was carefully placed, only on my skin, to signify that I am no different than these animals, and that my life as a boxer, much like the lives of the swine surrounding me, was now terminated. The raised textures within the painting are melted plastic, leather, and tile adhesive along with the luscious oil paint throughout. The repetition of the carcasses along with the repetition of the protruding ribs within the carcasses help the eyes of the viewer bounce around the piece, while the rolling hills of leather and plastic navigate the painting like a giant treasure map of flesh. I leave the decoding of my paintings to the imagination of my audience.
Gerald Schifone
“A Puncher’s Chance”
2018
At this time in my career I was taking from artists of all eras and styles, but my dominant
influence at the time happened to be a painter that I felt created paintings in the same fashion
as I was at the time. This artist’s name was Anselm Kiefer, a Neo-expressionistic artist who
creates massive mixed-media style art using infinite materials in his repertoire. He also uses
unordinary instruments such as melted metals and a machete to manipulate his pieces along
with the more common palette knives and brushes. With this same mindset, I decided to start
to familiarize myself with the plastics I was using in my pieces and begin to incorporate other
materials that were available to me. Along with the new materials I was beginning to use, I was
adding new tools to my daily operation such as a blow torch, tile float, and an arrangement of
tools when I felt they were necessary. I now felt like my art work had no boundaries and at this
time I felt I was beginning to find myself through my artwork and materials.
Anselm Kiefer
Aurora 2015-2017
The second piece in the series is “The Dark Horse”. A dark horse is a previously less known person or thing that emerges to prominence in a situation, especially in a competition involving multiple rivals, or a contestant that on paper should be unlikely to succeed but yet still might. This was my rendition of the brain scan that ended my boxing career. In my opinion the dark negative space in the cat scan resembled a black horse and the meaning behind it seemed perfect for what I was going through at that point in my life. The preparation for this piece was very time consuming while I had to layer melted plastic over and over again until I was satisfied with the composition, even more so than in “A Fighter’s Chance”. I wanted to make sure the center of the form was concaved enough to make it seem like a crater that was scarred into the painting. The viewer should feel the urge to reach into the painting’s focal point, the asymmetrical spongy shape in the center of the brain that seems to be below ground level. This painting is less figurative and more visceral. This piece is painted to look like a textured landscape painting from bird’s eye view of a place comparable to hell. While subtracting much of the cooler gradients from the first piece, the addition of more yellows and oranges make for a much bolder glowing composition. Where the painting is only about half the size of “A Fighter’s Chance”, what I did not want to happen was for this piece to somehow get lost in the exhibition.
Gerald Schifone
“The Dark Horse”
2018
Alongside “Dark Horse” and “A Fighter’s Chance” were a group of smaller paintings that I felt would benefit my final exhibit. Two of the paintings make up a set that I never cared to name because I considered them studies to get a feel for the melting of the plastics and putting my compositions together.
Gerald Schifone
(Study with Plastic and Paint 1 and 2)
2019
The piece that really stands out is the sculptural piece I composed using a lizard terrarium, wood, and plastics. I wanted to portray to my audience the reality that so many of us turn our backs to for selfish reasons. (“Leading Darkness into Light”) We pretend animals aren’t being slaughtered to put the food on our plates in the same fashion that we pretend the fighters, football players, etc. on television aren’t ending their careers with serious issues both mentally and physically to once again feed us on an entertainment level. These “secrets” need to be brought to light and that is exactly what I want this sculptural painting to do for my audience. The glass on all five sides are painted black with only a small pinhole in the shape of an eye left transparent so signify the eye of both the farmers looking in and the swine looking back, a parallel to one another for only those brief moments. Random aligned slices are also taken out of the black glass to symbolize the bars that incarcerate these animals being held against their will at factory farms. A piece of wood with melted plastics similar to my paintings is attached to the opening, making it a dark enclosed box. There is also plastic resting on the bottom of the terrarium, all painted in a flesh-like manner, so that when you look inside this box it looks like rotted meat. A small battery-operated light would be in the sculpture to help the view of the inside and to illuminate the small hole for the eye of the viewer. This piece would work best against a wall with the wood part against the wall, not free-standing in the middle of a room.
Gerald Schifone
“Leading Darkness into Light”
2019
“Cannibal” is a small piece I created to go along with the terrarium piece as a small series in my show going back to another subject I feel strongly about, factory farming. By successfully amalgamating both my son Gerald and my pig Hammy into one form, I was hoping to create an apparition to the viewers. This painting creates an autostereogram like appearance that forces you to fix your eyes on one object or the other because the objects share one common eye. The innocence and intelligence seen in the stare of a pig is no different than that of a young child and that is exactly what I wanted to portray to the viewers.
Gerald Schifone
“Cannibal”
2019
The Series “Personal Evaluation” containing “Lost in My Own Shadow”, “A New Beginning”, “Blurred Reflection” and “Reclaimed” symbolizes a timeline of the years following my injury and the mental anguish I was feeling inside. Any time someone asks me why I stopped boxing or where I disappeared to over the past few years. I never know how to respond to this, and very rarely answer the question with the truth. I almost feel like if I don’t answer with the truth it somehow makes me feel as if I quit the game willingly for my family or my career. Realistically I am “lost in my own shadow” and until recently have been able to come to light with the entire situation through my art. “Blurred Reflection” is a painting in the shape of an eye. I painted my face in a cubist manner using the top of a glass table with an opaque sheet of glass as a lens to my glasses. My face is distorted because for around three years I didn’t feel like I knew who I was anymore and when I looked in the mirror I didn’t see the confident man I once was. Both “A New Beginning” and “Reclaimed” resemble my life now as a born-again artist who has finally found myself through this new form of art that I have discovered and flourished with. “Reclaimed” especially contains a lot of symbolism throughout including the tiles surrounding the small shovel and the windows with images of photo transfers of my actual brain scan in repetitive form much like some of the works of Andy Warhol in his “Death and Disaster” series. One of the tiles is slightly shifted showing that there is a chink in my armor and for the first time in my life I felt that my childhood dreams were stripped from me entirely hence the small plastic beach shovel inside the walls. Although still showing my past as a boxer and the head injury to go along with that past, it is a new me now and I am in an infinite realm of possibilities. The only person holding me back from greatness is myself, not boxing. Boxing was the stepping stone for what is to come. Every tragedy contains the seeds of triumph” (Scott Sorrell).
Gerald Schifone
“Lost In My Own Shadow”
2019
Gerald Schifone
“A New Beginning”
2019
Gerald Schifone
“Blurred Reflection”
2019
Gerald Schifone
“Reclaimed”
2019
“Paradise”, another piece for the show with a larger color palette involved uses the insides of small cushions from a couch, aluminum exhaust piping, and melted plastics, is another piece that calls for a light in the composition. This was one of the last pieces I created for this series. At this point I felt that I said what I needed to say about my own tragedy. It was time to move on to other issues that are affecting everyone, especially my kids and the younger generations growing up in a world of squalor. I wanted to portray a beautiful garden that would serve in the same manner make-up does to help beautify even the ugliest of people over this textured but rather repulsive canvas I chose to use. I loved the repetitive nature of the springs that reminded me of a field of dandelions and the thick metal piping that I wanted to resemble a camouflaged snake slithering through the beautiful garden. I melted the plastics to help secure the composition together and also hold the metal piping in the position I felt best. I left the piping hanging off the bottom which helps convert my piece from a relief sculpture to a three-dimensional sculpture. The red lightbulb will be placed in the pipe toward the top of the composition to really illuminate my piece and create a focal point for the audience. I wanted to juxtapose the fictional stories and meanings from the bible and the facts of global warming and mass pollution from human consumption.
Gerald Schifone
“Paradise”
2019
Along with this topic, I created another small painting called “Infected Ocean” to depict the ocean in human form with large gashes that look similar to shark bites. I not only included melted plastics in this, but also plastic netting and other junk that could be found in our oceans. If we continue dumping plastics and pollutants into the very wounded ocean/earth, we will soon be extinct.
Gerald Schifone
“Infected Ocean”
2019
The graduate program at Bridgewater State University has opened my eyes to a whole other world in the arts. It has transformed me into the artist I am today. My entire life has been full of ups and downs since as far back as I can remember with so many positives and negatives that have come and gone. One thing that has always maintained an equal fragment of my life is my passion for art. I am completely focused on this more than ever and feel that the only direction I am capable of going from here is up. I am a humble and hard-working family man with a talent. My goal is to use that talent to speak up for the less fortunate beings in the world while being able to do what I love. Between teaching art and actively creating art, I can proudly say art has become my life now and I am completely content with that.