IAN FELICE

To find me, follow the pigeons

Artist Reception: November 20th, 6-8 PM

November 20th - December 21st, 2024

Maybe it was Allen Ginsberg quoting Ezra Pound who said, “The problem with poetry is it’s not singing and the problem with singing is it’s not dancing.” Lucky for painter Ian Felice he can traffic in multiple mediums. As lead singer of The Felice Brothers, they just wrapped up their 2024 UK/European tour. It’s easy to see how his own poetry translates from sonnet into song. “I could make out the hills of heaven / And above them, white clouds of surrender.” This piece of prose comes from his 2021 book of poems, “The Moon Over Edgar,” but feels like a lyric awaiting musical accompaniment.

“The most fundamental way to represent space is to make a horizon line that essentially splits the painting into two planes, whether its earth and sky, water and sky, the physical and spiritual, consciousness and subconscious, or any other contrary forces,” says Ian Felice of his artistic process. “I think the bifurcation often comes up in the paintings because I’m searching for the simplest way to express an idea.”

As if his creative output doesn’t seem folkloric enough, consider that his painting studio in upstate New York is a one room wooden church from 1873, surrounded by farmland and forest. “I grew up in a very rural mountain town in the Catskills,” he explains. “As a kid, I lived on a dead-end road surrounded by forest. That’s the environment that puts me at ease and allows me to concentrate on work.”

They say that anything which stills your mind is a mediation - watching the sunset, lighting a candle - and anything which opens your heart is a prayer - playing with a child, embracing a new adventure - but the ideal is to check both boxes at once. Our hope is that the restorative power of Ian Felice’s paintings might satisfy both criteria.