Back to the Future

As an artist, Nicholas Mancini says that there “aren’t too many painters who are alive now that I’m interested in” although there are “plenty of ones who are dead I feel connected to.”

Although very young--he graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts just a year ago after a stint at the Maryland Institute College of Art and attendance at various ateliers—he approaches drawing and painting the old fashioned way, as artistic mediums to master, and eschews the current trends of conceptual and abstract art.

In other words, to appreciate his work you don’t need to read a little placard in order to understand what it all means. You merely enjoy the skill of his technique and the strength of his vision.

Take a look at his painting, Self-Portrait with Ghost. In it, a close-eyed figure sitting on a chair is clearly startled, whether it’s by something in front of him out of sight or the hand on the back of his chair is unclear. What is clear is the specificity of the person’s features, the feeling of shock, and the sense of being touched by the unknown.

When asked about the painting, Mancini says that he painted it thinking about his grandfather who died 9 months before he was born, and with whom he shares many characteristics, as well a spiritual connection. The grandfather was a classical violinist who lost his hearing in his left ear, thus the emphasis on the left ear in the painting. He also travelled a lot, and the figure in the painting wears his overcoat. And, Mancini used his mother’s hand as a model.

This viewer couldn’t help but think the painting also represents his connection with long dead painters.

Mancini has consciously chosen to learn from those whose bent is to the past. He recently returned from studying 6 months in Norway with the figurative painter, Odd Nerdrum. Highly regarded and well known in painting circles, Nerdrum also draws his inspiration from older masters, such as Caravaggio and Rembrandt.

When Gaga Gallery owner Julie Brooks visited Nicholas Mancini to see his paintings, she was immediately drawn in. “I really love his work because he puts something in it that makes you want to investigate it.”

The result of that meeting is the upcoming show, “Beneath and Between.”

The “Beneath” part is a new series of watercolors based on x-rays taken of Old Masters paintings. The x-rays are taken by curators and others who use the method as a way of understanding how the classic artists worked—what layers of images, what paints. Mancini first came across them in art books and “became fascinated with the images themselves as a different way to look at the masters.” Working in charcoal, he enlarged them.

While in Norway, he came across an image of Titian, an x-ray of his work St. Sebastian. He says of the experience that it was a “crazy time warp … I hadn’t seen x-rays for months and all of a sudden they pop back up in my mind.” He used what was at hand to capture the image, water color.

He felt that the fluid, free and overlapping colors lent themselves to oils, and he began to then remake the images in oils, “to see what would happen.”

Brooks, however, saw the watercolors and suggested a series. She says of the pieces, they are “pure and beautiful” and “stand alone.”

Mancini adds that, since he sees the watercolors as part of a process that will end in oil, the watercolor work is an “in between point for me,” so it’s “a little strange.” He really wants to see “how people respond to technique with water color.”

There will be 9 or 10 of these x-ray inspired watercolors in the show.

The “Between” is a smaller sample of oils. In them, Mancini looks at “the line between interior and exterior” and “between male and female.” To see what Mancini means by this, look at his painting, Half-Open.

In Half-Open, a wardrobe tells you clearly that you are in an interior space, yet a reflection from the mirror is of the exterior, so the viewer questions where they are exactly and also where the boundary is between the inside and the outside.

Also, in the same work, the figure to the left is “ambiguous.” Some see it as a man, some as a woman.

On a personal note, Mancini attended Swampscott Middle School, where his mother still teaches Spanish, and graduated from St. John’s Prep in Danvers.

So come down to Gaga Gallery and help him celebrate his opening, as well his recent honor as Best of Show in the Marblehead Arts Festival, and also what will certainly be an illustrious career to come in the arts.

Gaga Gallery, located at 459 Humphrey Street, is open Wednesdays through Fridays, 12 to 7, Saturdays and Sundays 12-6; for more information on the gallery and Mancini’s show, visit www.gallerygaga.com