Interview with Tony Serio

I’m pleased to present this zoom interview with the Manhattan-based painter Tony Serio, who is currently showing his work in the Bowery Gallery’s two-person show, Uptown Paintings, Michael Louis Johnson/Tony Serio. (see link to online presentation) I became acquainted with Tony Serio’s work after viewing his work online from the Westbeth Gallery’s exhibition, LIGHT OF DAY, The Language of Landscape that was curated by Karen Wilkin in March 2022.
I was drawn to his vigor and sensitivity, as well as the expressive paint handling of his figures in the landscape. The painterly summation of the figures complements the gestural movement of light through the space and elevates the literal to a lyrical response to the setting. Serio here discusses at length his background, painting process, and thoughts on how he goes about painting the urban landscape from observation. I wish to thank him for the generous contribution of his time and energy with this interview.

from his website about page:

“Serio studied at Yale School of Art and Maryland Institute College of Art. Solo shows at the Bowery Gallery and other New York venues. Group shows include: Alpha Gallery, Boston, MA; The Drawing Center, NY; The Babcock Gallery, NY and The Hopper House, Nyack, NY. Awards include: Alice B. Kimball Grant for traveling in Italy, Yale University; Drawing Center Show Award and NoMAA (Northern Manhattan Arts Association) Grants in 2008 and 2011 to paint a series of Hudson River Greenway landscapes. Collections include Donald and Allison Innes, Columbia University and various other private collectors.”

Larry Groff:
How did you get your start with painting? Please say something about your experience at art school.

Tony Serio:
I was lucky to have an arts program where I lived in New Haven during my last two years of high school. There I had Yale graduates as teachers. The first year was more general, where we did painting, sculpture, and photography. I was aware of the great collection at Yale Art Gallery and had already been there but as I was more informed about different artists, it became a great resource and a favorite place to spend time. The last year I chose painting and drawing and had a teacher that really got me on the trajectory I’m still on today. Peter Ziou introduced me to working from life and “looking.” I realized I had a long way to go but he was so supportive and encouraging. So, I went to the Maryland Institute College of Art on his recommendation from 1974 to 1978.

LG:
I’ve heard there are a lot of landscape painters who taught there; is that right?

Tony Serio:
Yes, mainly because of Eugene Leake, who was a landscape painter and ran the whole show at that time. My first teacher was Raoul Middleman.

LG:
I read that he passed away last year. You were lucky to study with such a great painter.

Tony Serio:
I was so sorry to hear about his passing. I studied with him for my first year there, right out of high school, and he quickly got you in the middle of it. Baltimore also had such great museums, the Walters Art Museum with so many other great painters like Manet, Ingres, Delacroix, such a compliment to what Middleman was talking about in class. The Baltimore Museum of Art, which had the Cone Collection with Matisse’s work, was such an important part of my education that another teacher, Anne Tabachnick, introduced me to. Middleman gave me my first taste, and going outside in a public urban environment and painting, after a while, I would lose the feeling of being uncomfortable and self-conscious and just be there for that purpose. Basically, we came at it with whatever skills we had and then we improved by working at it and looking at the best examples we had in the museums. I am thankful for the many wonderful teachers I had and was so happy to be at that school.

Tony Serio:
At a certain point, I had gotten away from alla prima painting and wanted to work in a more sustained way, so I didn’t paint outside as much. After living in Brooklyn, NY a while, I eventually returned to going outside to paint again.

LG:
When you went to graduate school at Yale, did they discourage you from painting outside?

Tony Serio:
No, they didn’t do that; there was one student, David Gloman, in the class behind me who painted outside. A really fine painter dedicated to painting outdoors then and now; you can follow his posts.

I’m originally from the New Haven area and moved back from Baltimore after undergraduate school for a year and then moved to Washington DC, for three years. I did paint outdoors in DC a lot before grad school. But at Yale, I was more interested in painting the figure. I did a lot of figure drawings. I took Lester Johnson’s and Bernie Chaet’s class, I considered myself a studio painter. No one was saying, you can’t paint outside; you could do whatever you wanted. I did paint outside there a few times. I wanted to make studio paintings, using the resources I had, the figure drawings from my classes and my imagination. I was still observing things, such as my studio interior. But I was more interested in ways to construct a painting.

I was thinking a lot about Fernand Léger and Matisse, there was something about Léger that stuck with me, looking back to how my earlier teacher from Maryland Art Institute, Anne Tabachnick, who having studied with Hans Hoffman, introduced me to modernist painting concepts. I also was thinking a lot about Max Beckmann and working with a compressed, psychologically charged space. I wanted to rise to the occasion and make big confrontational paintings, even though that may not have been my natural inclination. I would drag these out for the final semester crits.

I wanted to paint an interior world from my imagination, and even after my graduate studies, I focused on the figures and the psychological tensions between the figures. I had a grant from Yale to travel, where I went to Italy for five weeks. The Caravaggio’s in Rome made a big impression on me. I loved the depth of the darks in his work.

Tony Serio:
After grad school, I moved to Brooklyn and shared a studio in Dumbo. At one point, I painted a view from the fire escape, I hadn’t done this in a while and it felt right. I later moved into a Brooklyn apartment with Sally, who became my wife, she had a yellow table with plants and various objects on it that I made a painting from. That painting was a turning point for me. Observed light came back into my painting in a new way. My approach became closer to what I was doing before I went to Yale. However, it was not quite the same because the painting was informed by my experience at Yale. I was questioning what was important to me, and I saw my strength was in working from perception.

Yale was a high-pressure situation, and I had no idea going into it. A lot of people seemed to be more informed of this, but we were all challenged by it and benefited in the end. I’m thankful for the friends I made there and how we supported each other.

LG:
My experience here in California is that many galleries aren’t interested in showing naturalistic landscapes. My guess is that they find it looks too similar to popular plein air painting and that it would have less appeal to their higher-end collectors. 

Tony Serio:
Of course, they are about the business of marketing and selling paintings.

LG:
Is that much different in New York? Would you say there is a wider acceptance and appreciation of landscape painting?

Tony Serio:
No, not so much. I mean, it depends on your angle. Often it might mean the work has got to have some edgy, cynical or disturbing content that’s over the top and calculating. Those are the things that are more likely to be shown and sold. Then there is John Bradford, a former Bowery Gallery member, who has gallery representation now. He does these fantastic imaginary historical landscapes and interiors that aren’t cynical at all. They are all about painting and a wonderful narrative. Not to mention Stanley Lewis and Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cunningham. Obviously, these are painters of great integrity and have nothing to do with what I described above.

LG:
If you are mainly trying to make something that is beautiful or aesthetically important from a painting’s formal perspective, something that involves meeting the standards of past traditions of painting, it can be an uphill battle if you’re dealing with people who only have a limited understanding or appreciation. You can’t really explain or teach a gallery director why they should show your painting.

Tony Serio:
I’ve had a really good reaction from people about the work that I have up now in my show. I start to think that people are finally responding to my work. I’m getting more attention and recognition from my peers so that feels good and kind of astounding.

I am working full-time (as a graphic designer), and in my “free time”, I run to do my painting. So having a show is a way to step back to look at what you’ve done. I try to go to as many openings as I can and support the other members of the Bowery Gallery. We support each other, and we have this great community. And that’s a great thing about this, as you know, being part of a co-op gallery, you have this camaraderie and try to build on it. 

LG:
You were recently in the very impressive show “Light of Day” at the Westbeth gallery.
How was that for you?

Tony Serio:
The “Light of Day” show came about when a group of like-minded landscape painters got together to organize a show. Westbeth was our first choice, but we were considering other venues. We decided to invite recognized artists in the field, Stanley Lewis, Lois Dodd, and Al Kresch. It was such an honor to have our work hanging alongside the painters we championed. Karen Wilken graciously accepted our request to curate the show. It was great experience working with her to hang the show. We also thank the galleries that lent works for the exhibition.

LG:
Who are some painters who are currently most influential to you? What art books might you have open right now in your studio?

Tony Serio:
I have this book of Andrea Mantegna here, and I just like the way he works his figures into the space. They may seem rigid but they always hold my interest in how they define the space. If I go to the Metropolitan Museum, I always have to stop and have to look at Mantegna. Also, the Carpaccio in the Met and the ones I saw in Venice. Carpaccio created paintings about saints with a narrative but turned it into an eyewitness event. That’s something that I want to get in my work.

The big painting of the volleyball players in my recent show has a lot of figures. They started multiplying as I worked on it, similar to the pageantry Carpaccio has in his paintings. There’s also this incidental stuff going on, making it fresh and whimsical. But, in the end, I’m after a solid construction with the figures in a spacial moment.

I had been looking at Lennart Anderson’s street paintings and the show at NYSS was a just-in-time show for me. I thought I would never see those older street paintings again. I often look at other painters out of the corner of my eye or when I go to museums, I might see something at that time that could spark something in my painting. When I’m actually painting, I’m not looking at anybody, just working on the painting, but I think all this stuff is there, and it percolates up and comes out in the work.

LG:
So, would you ever take the figures in someone like Carpaccio or other early Renaissance painters to use as a source for one of your figures?

Tony Serio:
No, I don’t do that. It’s something I should be open to.

LG:
I’m curious to know more about your thoughts about incorporating your figures into the landscape, the space. Especially the works that you’ve done in the park there at Riverside, playing volleyball, jogging and hanging out in the park.

Tony Serio:
That’s a good question, one of my paintings that I sold from the Westbeth exhibition is a long, horizontal painting titled Summer. The bicyclist coming towards us and the person running were made up. And then the people on the ground laying come mostly from life-drawing sessions. The one on the bicycle I made up by observing and drawing from memory as bicycles went back and forth.

I remember how Rackstraw Downes talked about painting cars passing by on the highway. He said a car would go by and paint a little of it and then another car go past— and paint a little more, combining each glimpse to gradually build up a car. What I did wasn’t exactly that. I think I just tried to get something in my mind and put it down. How would the figure be in this position? For the big four by eight-foot large volleyball painting, I made up a lot of figures from drawing on site. The players are always moving around and the ball is going back and forth, so I see their poses, then I try to draw that. Then I would readjust the pose with more looking and moving the arm or leg into a new position. So, I’m really observing and working from memory.

LG:
I’ve heard it said that working from life is actually working from memory when you think about it. Rarely do you paint at the same time you’re looking at the subject; there is always the lag of seconds or minutes from when you take your eyes off the subject to mix and apply the paint – from the memory of what you saw.

That said, your work appears carefully observed, I sense that you’re viscerally engaged with your motif but at the same time, there’s a synthesis of imagination and abstraction going on, especially with the figures.

Tony Serio:
When I lived in Brooklyn, I painted the streets nearby and Cobble Hill Park. I bought a digital camera to take photos of my work but took it outside to photograph what I was painting. There was a busy intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street that I was interested in for the buildings but when I got home to look at the images, there were people crossing the street that I don’t remember seeing. I was interested in the movement and gesture that a photograph captures. So, for a while, I worked from these photos and continued when I moved to Washington Heights. Though I still went out and painted on-site, I wanted to make larger studio paintings. I was doing a series of paintings down by Hudson River Park and had a long horizontal canvas, about 28” x 62”, that I started indoors. There was a passage of trees that I just couldn’t make sense of in the photo I was using, so I decided to take it outside. Once I got out there and managed to get the canvas setup and it was clear as day what I had to do. I could clearly see how the foliage was layered. So, I developed a hybrid working process that includes direct observation, drawing, and small painting studies and photos as needed.

In the smaller painting of the volleyball players in my recent show, I painted on location to get the court and trees then I used a photo to populate the court. A photo I took captured one player getting into position to hit the ball and he’s low to the ground with one arm extended. Again, I don’t remember actually seeing it as it happened so fast, but I couldn’t resist making a painting around that moment.

It’s not that I want to make sports action paintings, but it’s the idea of movement and the potential for something to happen. My feeling is that photos can and have been used as source material without looking photographic. Look at Degas, Cezanne and Matisse.

LG:
Interesting. Your paintings integrate the figures very well with the rest of the painting. They feel consistent and don’t stick out or feel out of place. 

Tony Serio: .
Everything is in the same painting language.

I thought I would go back and work on that painting more, and I may have made minor adjustments but felt that statement was there. I always think about what Matisse said about Giotto. “When I see the Giotto frescoes at Padua, I do not trouble to recognize which scene from the life of Christ I have before me. I perceive instantly the sentiment that radiates from it, and which is instinct in the composition in every line and color.” The content isn’t in the facial expressions or details but in the elements of the composition.

When working on the larger volleyball players, I documented each stage for myself to see the decisions I made and how it changed. I wanted to build up with more figures as I went along. The earlier images were more simplified and pretty clear but I sacrificed some things to gain in other ways. As I looked more at the work, I realized I had to keep shrinking the figures until the proportion to the space felt right. This painting was a way for me to get back to creating in the studio.

LG:
Do you find working on large paintings outside a problem with the wind, bugs, gawkers and crazy people interrupting you and such?

Tony Serio:
With larger canvases, I have to worry about wind especially working down by the river. There are rocks along the riverside that I put in my French easel and then use bungie cords to hold the canvas in place. My experience with people is that they tend to be reserved and reluctant to come up to me while I’m painting. A few might talk to me a little bit and I welcome that. If I had too much of it, I would be less welcoming, but I’m out there in the park and everybody’s into their own thing, the guys are playing volleyball over there, people are cooking outside and enjoying the music that they blast out. Sometimes I feel almost invisible. Which is what I want, I don’t want to be an attraction. When I’m “in the moment” and working on something, all the noise seems to recede.

LG:
Painting in a park is likely different than painting in more urban surroundings. You’re probably not going to paint on a really crowded sidewalk. I can’t imagine anybody doing that, however, maybe you’ve seen the video of Antonio Lopez Garcia painting in Madrid? Where and he had like maybe 50-60 people around him watching him paint. 

You also paint out your window from where you live on Riverside Drive, is that right?

Tony Serio:

I took a look at that video and that’s Plaza del Sol in Madrid. I remember going there soon after we arrived in Madrid for the first time. That would be like setting up in Times Square.

Yes, painting the view from my window has been a main stay for me. I live on 162nd Street and Riverside Drive. Riverside Drive splits off and I’m on the service road, which climbs up and we are at the top of the hill on the fifth floor. I always have a lower road drive in my views when I include the view of the park and trees below.

LG:
Nice if you do a lot of your work out the window.

Tony Serio:
Yes, there’s the George Washington bridge, the park below and a huge sky.

LG:
Can you tell me more about painting out your window and the night painting you mentioned?

Tony Serio:
The first thing I wanted to do was a night painting which proved to be beyond me at that point. It eventually became a dusk painting. I had a hard time painting in the full light of day, but I learned so much from tackling that view. It completely changed my sense of aerial perspective and fundamentally changed my understanding of landscape space. I finally got a handle on it, but it really gave me run for my money. I ended up covering over many early attempts with more recent works. In the end, that first attempt finally became a night painting.

LG:
I found the watercolors and drawings on your website very intriguing. A number of them seemed exceptional and perhaps bring Cezanne’s landscape watercolors to mind. Do you consider them studies or independent works? Are these done on-site? What can you say about your watercolors and drawings.

Tony Serio:
The water-based media I preferred to use was opaque gouache because I could paint over and change things as I do with oil painting.

I tried doing watercolor but got discouraged as this could be really fussy and technique(y) but boy, when you see a great watercolor like a Winslow Homer, they can really knock your socks off. It was great to see all those Cezanne watercolors in the MOMA show. I definitely had a lot to take away from that show. I think you have to make many of these to get good and not be afraid to make some that will go into the waste basket. It teaches you to back off.  My problem is going too far and trying to “finish” the watercolor. It would look great at the beginning but I’d see one more thing needing to be fixed, and before you know it—it just dies, turns into something flabby, losing clarity and crispness of the color and marks. So, finally, I decided to take a drawing attitude approach leaving the white of the paper and try not to bring it to my idea of finish. I’ll draw with the brush and start from a point. It was more interesting for me to grow it out from there and build out rather than thinking of the composition covering the paper. I’m trying to let it happen and not get in the way, a more spontaneous, fresh approach.

LG:
Have you ever tried using acrylic gouache? It was new to me but I recently tried it and found it dries very quickly and easily allows you to paint in matte opaque layers similar to gouache but doesn’t get powdery, and the color covers better. Maybe it could lessen the risk of something appearing to be overworked. I think it’s great for studies and experimenting with visual ideas. 

Tony Serio:
No, I haven’t but it’s good idea to switch media from time to time.

LG:
Can you talk about what you think about and how you go about capturing the moment of a scene—the sense of place and quality of the light and time of day? How do you sustain that initial excitement and feeling of that moment over the course of a larger, more complex painting?

Tony Serio:
It’s about the urgency of painting, the urgency of getting something down. Things that are about to change or it’s going to move. The light is always changing, and I’m just trying to get that moment. These are the things I choose to deal with or I could stay inside and setup a more controlled situation. I showed with Lynn Kotula many times, who’s work I always admired from the first time I saw it. She was a good landscape painter but chose to paint still life and not to “chase the light”. So, it’s a matter of choices and mine is clear.

I’ve had others tell me that my work has a sense of place and I like that. I don’t know how conscious I am of doing that. I stay with a spot or have multiple spots that I return to that have become familiar to me and I think that helps. When working on a painting and feeling boxed in, I may make a change, repaint, or move slightly to open it up. In my large canvas that I worked on indoors, I changed some of the figure groupings as I would go and get fresh input from my park sketches and watercolors.

Painting the window view has a whole other set of problems. I want to paint clouds now so how do I do that? I could use photos and I have. I have yet to really build up studies that I can work from. I have been able to get some works by just going at it directly alla prima.

LG:
For a long time, I felt that painting from life was an important way for painters to avoid being cliched. I’ve often thought that painting from life and the great concentration required to paint from observation in the urgency of changing light and surroundings helps to lose any self-consciousness. You get into a zone that can allow a more authentic self to come out. Is this something you think about as well? What more can you say about this?

Tony Serio:
I usually have a bunch of tools in my hand, brushes, and palette knives. I’m switching tools, going from one to another and painting the tree trunk, then painting the branches and the spaces in between. I try to make it happen at once, going for the right mark, tone, and color. It’s demanding work. Sometimes I focus on areas and really don’t have an idea of the rest of the painting but, somehow, it hangs together better than I thought it would. If not, then other areas have to change or be brought up to the level of newly worked parts. When I bring the painting indoors, I don’t know if it’s complete until I get some distance on it. Most times I find there’s nothing else to do, and I have a complete statement.

LG:
Anything more you’d like to say about the work in your show that’s up now?

Tony Serio:
Most of the paintings are about the park and I’m working on-site for the most part and the others are a hybrid of different sources as I described before. I’m having the figure more prominently presented and their activity. In the past, the figures were notes in the painting or gave scale to the landscape.

The paintings from the window are about the big sky. I always want to get as much in the picture as possible and stretch it to its limit. In doing that, I made the view more about the sweep of the ground and the road below. Lately, I’ve been concentrating on the sky and clouds and leaving just a strip of land on the bottom to anchor the composition.

LG:
Do you have many of your drawings in the show?

Tony Serio:
I have sketches that inspired the large painting and watercolors in a rack for anyone interested to peruse. On my website, I have a pastel drawing about half the size with the same proportions as a large volleyball painting. I drew from my resource drawings to put together what was to be the start of my larger canvas. I worked on this as the large one was in progress, but it remains very much a working drawing.

It has been my pleasure to show with Michael Louis Johnson at the Bowery Gallery in our show called “Uptown Paintings”. Our paintings explore upper Manhattan through incidental views from a window or dense groupings of trees in our local city parks. Michael focuses on an antique garden out his front room window with its odd incline and the box-like surrounding wall using oil pigment sticks working with brushes and his hand. I would say our approach to painting has a strong attitude of drawing where the mark of the tool and hand of the artist is evident.