Francine Matarazzo | Untitled 001P2 (1983) - “For over a decade now I have been creating paintings and works on paper that reflect my travels and time residing in the Middle East and North Africa. I paint abstractly to re-capture that time, its feelings and intensity. Days, months and years of a camera’s eye are tucked away in my history – a history with footprints in Iran, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Afghanistan, and India, all places whose palpability has long since yielded to interpretation through color and texture.
As fragmented, complex and layered as these memories are, so too are the surfaces of my art. Calligraphic markings, smudges, swirls, bits of canvas, torn pieces of old notebooks, strips of painted mylar, dabs of paint, pieces of cloth, all enhanced in a spectrum of color, all stand-ins for a long ago reality. They claim their places of desert skies, sun-scorched sands, gardens, courtyards, souks, mountains, valleys, villages, people and events. Texture upon texture, layer upon layer, indigo on saffron, turquoise on alizarin, they form my bridges to the past, bridges that invite the viewer to step across with me in time and join me in my memories.”