Cianne Fragione

Lives and works in Washington, D.C., USA

Artist statement

ARTIST STATEMENT My paintings are an intersection of visual art and poetry based on my study of two volumes of poetry, Mediterraneo and Ossi di Seppia, by the Italian writer Eugenio Montale. I engage with Montale's linguistic spirit through visual elements that draw from memories, traditions, and histories — personal, cultural, and artistic — creating fluid themes and imagery. These encourage a fluidity of themes and imagery that soon overlap as they continue to reorganize themselves and open further avenues of exploration. A combination of oil paint, and mixed medium materials, in conjunction with found objects and textiles, gives rise to graceful and rough transitions. Refined and scruffy surfaces evoke encrusted layers of time-laden structures and landscapes. Meanwhile, delicate drawn lines enlarge the surface narrative by creating open spatial fields. Collaged fragments add a sense of the figure. Built slowly, over lengthy periods, each work becomes a dense synthesis of influences and personal perspectives, including mid-twentieth-century gestural abstraction, my close connection to the expressive work of the San Francisco Bay Area Beat and Funk artists, and the physical fluency of my early training as a professional dancer. But unlike a performance, which is ephemeral, the canvas or sheet of paper has become the stage, the space in which movement is orchestrated and inscribed in durable, articulate form.

Artwork