As depicted by Tommaso Arscone, the female face is intriguingly complex, suggestive of attitude and personality. Above all, however, Arscone’s paintings of women’s visages convey the power of a beauty born from order and harmony. Working generally with oil on canvas, he renders his subjects’ features flawlessly in almost photographic detail, yet the result ultimately bears the traces of Pop Art, sharing the fascination with countenance displayed by masters such as Warhol and Lichtenstein. Likewise, Arscone’s work relies on a combination of bright and dark color — sometimes suffusing the entire composition, and at other times used to highlight elements such as piercing eyes or a cherry-red mouth, all emphasized by attention to light and shadow. These techniques create striking portraits that, while conveying a specific emotion, leave room for the viewer’s thoughts, for him or her to interject possible reasons for the given woman’s mood. Thus Arscone’s art is, in the tradition of Pop Art, open and accessible to all.
Tommaso Arscone is Italian by birth, originally from Genoa. His works have been exhibited throughout his native country and in the United States.
My vocation can be explained through a combination of figures and colors aimed to produce not only a pleasant visual expression, but also an ideal suggestion of proportionate order and harmony.
I use images that give shape to the intuition of matters until I’m able to draw near what is unique and intimate in them. The shape of the visage and the harmonical details allow the observer to be free to imagine what may not necessarily be there.
