Some art encourages the viewer to look at the world with new eyes, to see the everyday within a different context and meaning. “Perceptions” was shown at the Foster gallery inside the First United Methodist Church last October. Large-scale oil paintings and Trompe l’oeil (fool the eye) paper castings by Nita and John Tuccillo offered a view of reflective surfaces and illusory spaces. Both Illinois Central College professors, the Tuccillos are versed in drawing, painting and actively engage with the ICC community.
They came to Peoria in 1999, when John began his career as chair of the Art Department. Each artist explores a view of reality with precision and exactitude. John through Trompe L’oeil sculpture and Nita’s stunning oil paintings inspired by nature, dewy drops and glistening ripples. They have begun combining their skills into realistic three-dimensional works that emulate glass, concrete, stone and wood with reflective and imaginative scenes.
This piece was on display at First United Methodist Church.
John’s principal work is casting molds of physical structures like manhole covers, walls, and street-based structures. His hours-long process consists of rubber mold making, completed by pouring and working with paper pulp pressed into the forms. Realistic surface painting creates an illusion that exactly replicates the original object.
The sense of solidity is complemented by Nita’s painting of reflective scenes onto the surfaces. Degraded cement and stone walls, grates and tree roots make for figurative and colorful additions.
The viewer is confronted by a seemingly heavy mass that couldn’t be hung on a gallery wall. Yet there it is, rusted or degraded, gnarled and worn. We examine the everyday, out of context, yet with familiarity.
Nita’s paintings are a study in reflectivity both onto the surface and within the depth of the imagery. In “Perceptions,” her 5-x4-inch paintings shimmer with a surface filled with liquid drops. These dewy drips bulge from the image with glistening exactness. Are they superficial and on the exterior, or suspended in midair? Hidden within the background are vistas that softly draw the viewer into vast spaciousness.
Nita Tucillo’s work goes deep instead of traversing an expanse of colored landscape. Her paintings of singular droplets, dark and glistening hold the viewer in suspension, creating longing.
Toned down into a pallet edging toward neutrality, the emotionality of Nita’s work goes deep instead of traversing an expanse of colored landscape. Her paintings of singular droplets, dark and glistening hold the viewer in suspension, creating longing. She pulls us toward tenderness and loss without an easy identification of the source, a sense of feeling singular and vulnerable.
Art helps us find meaning in the world, to explore as the creators of the work have done the why and wisdom of being in connection with the earth. A walk in autumn with leaves and twigs falling to the sidewalk leads us to see each crag and crack as something to relish. Drain cover words, images on an iron grate, rain drops on the car, become a greater part of our experience. We are what we hold, cherish and experience through our perceptions.