Portable Landscapes

Painter Joseph Fiore transforms observations of rocks into lyrical metaphors.

By: Ilene Dube

Sedges have edges, and so do the paintings of Joseph Fiore. "Homage to Gabriele Munter."

   During the half year Joseph Fiore, 79, lives in New York, he likes to take walks with his wife, Mary. The couple walks in Central Park, where for 30 years they have been avid birders. They walk to the Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
   During the warmer months, the Fiores take their walks in rural Jefferson, Maine, where they have summered since 1959. Surrounded by gently rolling hills and working farms, Mr. Fiore picks up rocks.
   These are not the smooth pebbles, sometimes veined with cream colors, sometimes egg-shaped, that other rock collectors pick up along the beach, he notes. Mr. Fiore’s rocks have rough and jagged edges. "The ones I get have at least two different faces, and one side is very different from the other side," he says. In fact he calls his "rock fragments."

"Walpack Fossil"

   "When I’m looking for rocks, if they have marks that suggest writing or a message, I pick them up and use them," says Mr. Fiore.
   Sometimes he gets rocks from quarries or gravel pits. And on excursions to the saltwater cove, where he gets seaweed to fertilize his garden, he finds rocks. Some are sandstone, some are fossils, but he points out he is not a geologist, he is an artist.
   Joseph Fiore: 25 Years of Paintings from Rock Fragments is on view at the Rider University Art Gallery in Lawrence through March 7.
   The paintings are hung in chronological order and show the progression of Mr. Fiore’s vision from literal interpretions of rocks to more metaphorical concepts that emerge from ideas of the rock. The first room of the gallery covers the early rock period, starting with "Variations on a Rock" painted in 1978. Fourteen different views of a rock fragment painstakingly show its infinite facets, textures, colors, angles and patterns. From that first burst of an epiphany, he moves on to "Walpack Fossil," a larger, more detailed look at rock facets. "I started pushing the color, extending it more than what was in the rock itself," he says.

"Night and Day"

   "Dark Stone Map," painted in 1980, appears to be an abstract view of subterranean layers of geological formations. "Night and Day" shows two different sides of a rock, as different in color and texture as the polar opposite times of a 24-hour period.
   In 1982 he painted "Yellow Stone Map" and from here on he becomes more interested in the fantasy of color, departing from the actual color of rocks — brighter-than-bright yellows, baby-bath-toy blues, a range of oranges that goes from terra cotta and rust to Day-Glo orange.
   When Harry Naar, Rider Gallery director, studied with Mr. Fiore at the Philadelphia College of Art in the 1960s, Mr. Fiore was painting "beautiful, expansive landscapes that were realistic in a painterly way," recalls Mr. Naar.

"Capriccio"

   "He was a great teacher. He took us to Fairmount Park in Philadelphia to paint landscapes and draw from models outside." Mr. Naar was recently reacquainted with his former professor while planning the show.
   What makes a painting spectacular, says Mr. Naar, himself an artist, is that it "constantly captures you and makes you want to come back and discover other things. These paintings do that," he says of the rock fragment paintings. "They are reflective while being contemporary."
   The paintings in the second room of the show are reminiscent of Joan Miró and Paul Klee, reflecting the colors of the fauves and symbols ranging from hieroglyphs to crescents, starbursts, melon shapes, arrows, arched portals, wheels, fish, squiggles and celestial bodies. The symbols are not codes but are there for their intrinsic beauty and the patterns they create together.

"Homage to Matisse"

   "In these later paintings, he has become more spontaneous with more of an awareness of what he’s after," says Mr. Naar. "These are not exteriors of rock fragments — he’s blown them apart to get us inside this other world."
   Mr. Fiore’s Upper West Side studio, a 10-minute walk from his apartment, is large, clean and well-ordered. There is an area for painting and an area for storage. From its windows he can see pigeons, starlings, occasional hawks, kestrels feeding on sparrows and, in winter, owls in a conifer tree. Even in an urban environment, nature is near. He calls Central Park an "oasis in the megalopolis."
   At the center of his studio is a small Andrew Kohler piano he plays on occasion. (He has pianos in his winter and summer residences, as well; he and Mrs. Fiore play four-hand duets of Bach chorales and Joplin rags.) His father, Salvatore Fiore, was a founding member of the Cleveland Orchestra, playing second violin under George Szell. While at Black Mountain College in the mid-1940s, Joseph Fiore studied with 20th-century experimental-music composer John Cage.

"Excutcheon II"

   Black Mountain College in Black Mountain, N.C., existed from 1933 to 1953 as a progressive liberal arts school combining communal living with informal class structure. Faculty included Bauhaus-era architect Walter Gropius, cultural historian and critic Alfred Kazin, abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell and choreographer Merce Cunningham. William Carlos Williams and Albert Einstein were board members.
   At Black Mountain, Mr. Fiore studied painting with Josef Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Ilya Bolotowsky and Willem DeKooning. Later, his art career included teaching stints at Black Mountain, Philadelphia College of Art, Maryland Institute College of Art, Parsons School of Design, and in Dordogne, France. His work is in the permanent collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the North Carolina State museum and the Chase Manhattan Collection, among others. In addition, he has recently donated a rock painting to Rider University.
   "At Black Mountain, I was influenced by the abstract expressionists so my work was abstract, but I never quite felt I was that much of an abstract expressionist," says Mr. Fiore. "I took some of what I was seeing (and it influenced) the landscapes I started painting my last year at Black Mountain." The years 1959 to 1961 were transitional years from which he emerged as a realist.
   "In the mid-’70s, I started getting impatient with painting landscapes. Pop art had come in strong in the ’60s — it was pop! Then when op art came along, I had a reaction to the whole idea of what I was doing. I had done closet abstractions on paper and in collage."
   1978 was a revelatory year, after his discovery of rocks. In 1981, a fascination with butterflies developed during his nature walks, and he began looking for ways to incorporate wings and moths. By 1990, his "paintings transformed observations of the literal world of nature into lyrical metaphors," says Harry Naar.
   For example, "Homage to Matisse" bears little resemblance to a literal rock, but borrows the streaks and patterns Mr. Fiore saw in rocks to evoke the colors of Matisse’s Moroccan series and the rhythm of Matisse’s dancers.
   The paintings start with an idea or sketch, but mostly the work is improvisational. "I think about whether the forms will touch or not, whether I’ll keep the contour of the rock. The approach to the painting may be suggested by rock but not held to it."
   He applies the paint with a brush but uses "a lot of paper towels" to work it into the canvas. "I like the transparency of colors without adding white. If you stay close to the surface, you get more luminosity. When I get stuck, I just scrub it out and it opens things up. It can be the key to the whole thing."
Joseph Fiore: 25 Years of Paintings from Rock Fragments is on view at the River University Art Gallery, Bart Luedeke Center, 2083 Lawrenceville Road, Lawrence, through March 7. Opening reception: Feb. 5, 5-7 p.m. Mr. Fiore will present a talk about his work Feb. 12, 7 p.m. Gallery hours: Tues.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-7p.m., Sun. noon-4 p.m. For information, call (609) 895-5588.