Tony Luciani

Home: Toronto, Ontario
Title: No Looking Back #5
Media: Charcoal on paper
Dimensions: 101 x 66 cm
Website: www.tonyluciani.ca

Artist Statement

This portrait, ‘No Looking Back #5’, is one of a charcoal series dealing with facets of aging, frailty, and dementia. The loss of remembering and thinking skills severely reduces a person’s capability to carry out daily chores, yet painful recollections can remain. When my elderly mother, with her disabilities, moved in with me several months ago, I started a series of larger-than-life-sized portraits of family and friends. All the drawings display the subject with eyes closed, showing internalization and self-reflection, yet viewers can comfortably absorb the scale without feeling that they are the ones being observe or studied. Within this portrait, as well as life itself, there is “No Looking Back”.

I remain concerned in the perpetuity of ‘time’. It exists of course, and it’s something we cannot stop. Life and ageing continues no matter, and capturing even a fleeting moment requires time in the implementation of its stillness. My work is an exploration in resolving issues of progression and digression of tempo. As the minutes tick by, we are subjected to continual alteration, and captives to the biological clock. Holding on to a moment, though impossible to do, is all we have that comes close to halting it. I’m hoping my art can, at least, slow it down a touch.

EDUCATION:
1970-1974 Central Technical School, Toronto, art program
1975-1977 Ontario College of Art, Toronto; fine art program
1977-1978 Ontario College of Art, ‘Florence Program’, post-graduate; Florence, Italy

SELECTED SOLO:
2012 Wellington County Museum & Archives, Fergus, Ontario
2007 Galerie Crescent Contemporain, Montreal, Quebec; ‘From Da Vinci to Freud’
2005 Loch Gallery, Toronto, Ontario; ‘Layered Reality’

SELECTED GROUP CANADIAN:
2013 The Kingston Prize; Canada’s National Juried Portrait Competition
2011 The Kingston Prize; Canada’s National Juried Portrait Competition
2009 The Kingston Prize; Canada’s National Juried Portrait Competition

SELECTED GROUP INTERNATIONAL:
2012 ‘Figurativas 13’, 7th Concurso de Pintura y Escultura, Barcelona, Spain
1989 ‘Artitudes’, 7th International Art Competition, Art 54, New York, NY; Prize Award
1984 Hall du Centenaire, National Museum of Monaco; Invitational
1979 ‘A Canadian Start in Art’, Canada House, London, England; Invitational

SELECTED AWARDS:
1989, 1979, 1977 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant
1980-81 Canada Council “B” Grant
1976-77 George A. Reid Scholarship (Ontario College of Art)

SELECTED COLLECTIONS:
MEAM, Museu Europeu d’Art Modern, Barcelona, Spain
Canada House, London, England
Corporation of the City of Toronto