Galerie d’Orsay is thrilled to introduce to our community the joyously vibrant and colorful paintings of our two newest artists: Sky Hoyt and John Gentile.
SKY HOYT
Connecticut artist Sky Hoyt layers acrylics, rice paper, and textiles on her canvases juxtaposing the diverse surfaces and textures to create a dazzling sensory banquet. A deeply introspective talent, Sky handles form, color, and pattern, as a choreographer would a dancer’s body. She wields these elements with a nimble proficiency, guiding the eye to a specific cluster or a spatial void of haunting color — letting the viewer escape to a whimsical and joyful place between the real and abstract. Taking inspiration from artists like Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, Richard Diebenkorn, and Willem de Kooning, Hoyt departs from mere representation and accurate perspective in her vibrant and flattened compositions.
Sky grew up with an interior designer mother in a town with a fine fabric mill, and so was drawn to textiles from a young age. The intuitive harmony with which she arranges patterned textiles on the canvas reveals her life-long familiarity with the medium. Hoyt works with spontaneity, not adhering to her original ideas, but allowing the paintings to show her what they need.
Hoyt has exhibited her work in solo and group shows in Connecticut, California, New Hampshire, Missouri, Colorado, and Florida.
JOHN GENTILE
The youngest of five children growing up in a little mountain town in Abruzzo Italy, Gentile was drawn to art as a young child as a method for expressing his creativity and finding comfort during his war-torn youth. John first developed his artistic skills by plucking pieces of charcoal out of the fireplace in his two-room house to draw the beautiful nature and scenic landscapes in his homeland. As he grew older, neighbors noticed his remarkable skill and fostered his artistic talent by buying his art supplies.
Gentile’s carefully composed subjects peek through screens of saturated color to offer the viewer an enigmatic interpretation of reality. His unique compositions and brilliant use of contour lines create a wonderful dynamism — an abstract flatness combined with the mystery and delicate silhouettes of his spheres and lines. In his paintings, what is shown is just as important as what is obscured, and when one steps back, all is revealed.
Gentile has been honored by numerous museums, including the National Museum of Monte Carlo, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sulmona, Italy, the Duxbury Museum, MA, and the Bentley College Art Museum, MA, among others. His artworks are held in prestigious private collections in Europe, South America, and North America.
