Artist Statement

My work is about struggle.  Within my life there have been easily overcome struggles and there have been struggles that will take a lifetime to handle.  I find these struggles to be inherent in the very essence of life, the backbone that both rewards its conquerors with riches but crushes its submissives all in the same breath.  The unique aspect of the human experience stems from the existence of struggle, how and why people deal with it the way they do. 

My sociological background forces me to give merit to the societal factors that play a major role in effecting life and how it is lived.  Most often my paintings have a central figure, the struggler, surrounded by a mass of faces and other body parts.  The representation of others in my work signals to the viewer that the featured figure is not alone in their struggle, some identify chaos, others confusion and still others may offer a helping embrace.  I put the crowds of faces on the canvas, but ultimately it is up to the viewer to decide how the crowd triggers certain emotional responses. 

The struggler does not only interact with the mass around it, but also its internal drama.  Represented often by colorless faces, the internal chaos can be just as heavy as what is happening on the outside.  Hints of guilt, passion, confusion, sadness, happiness and contemplation fill the struggler with perhaps an even bigger struggle than what it deals with in the outside world, leaving a cathartic monologue for the viewer.

Now more than ever the interconnectivity of the human race is evident, people are a part of each others’ lives.  My work expresses that very notion of contemporary connection.  The faces that surround the struggler are almost faceless, yet they feel omnipresent.  As the information age continues to boom at a frenzied pace, we are left with many headlines, but no substance, all in a dizzying mess of distraction.  The news we digest has become fragments of abstraction, so too, I have painted the masses of others on my canvases fragmented and abstracted. 

I look for my paintings to evoke a questioning.  I want the viewer to look at the canvas and examine what makes them who they are.  Is it the crowd around them, or is it the crowd within. 

-Dominic Quagliozzi, 2007