Grace DeGennaro

Grace DeGennaro fuses sacred geometry and mathematical precision in her meditative paintings and works on paper. Her compositions feature lush grounds, symmetrical arrangements of translucent color, and meticulously placed dots forming geometric lattices.

Transforming ancient symbols from Eastern and Western traditions into contemporary visual language, DeGennaro invites viewers to experience stillness.

In Conversation with Friday Arts

Friday Arts

How did you make your way into art?

Grace DeGennaro
I was interested in drawing and painting from an early age, but I was more focused on reading and writing. I went to college as an English major, but during the interview process at Skidmore College the tour guide took us to a studio in a turn of the century building. And there was a loft with weavers on the top and painting in the bottom. And it was at that moment I knew I wanted to learn how to paint and study art. I loved the space and the smell of the studio and the oil paint and it felt like a space I wanted to be in all the time. It was really something that I couldn't even explain to myself, but I felt it deeply.

Are there themes that you find yourself returning to?

The goal of my work is to evoke for the viewer a sense of both time that's immediate and ancestral. So the actual making of the work and mark making, the beading, gives the viewer a sense of the time as I made the work. And the images suggest the vocabulary of images that is in the collective unconscious and that is from across time and history.

Do you have a mantra or philosophy that guides you?

It's always evolving, but over the years, I've been studying Buddhism and I'm getting older. I'm really thinking about presence and intentionality in my life and in my work. I'll probably make less work, but I'm hoping that every work that I make is full of that feeling of intentionality and that I was present when making the work. Living a little bit more slowly with more presence and really thinking about how my life affects the environment, which is another reason why I don't use a lot of paint. I want to live as lightly as I can for the remainder of my years.

Tell us about your practice of working in silence.

I work in silence so that I can really listen to the painting or the work on paper that I'm working on at that time. Because it almost tells me what to do.

Occasionally when I'm doing work that is more rote, I might listen to a podcast or some music. But when I'm really trying to think and I'm really trying to compose and work with images, I need to hear what I'm thinking. Silence is necessary for that process.

When did you first call yourself an artist?

I remember in the ‘70s when I was just finishing college and I remember thinking to myself, "Oh my God, could I just say that I'm a painter? That it was almost like a word that was sacred. Graduate school gave me a lot, and I thought I could call myself an artist after that.

Tell us more about your formal training.

I went into college as an English major, but by sophomore year I made English my minor and I had started drawing and painting classes. It was a very traditional, perceptual type of drawing where you would look at a still life or look at a figure and draw and paint. I had color theory at the very end of my senior year, which also made quite an impression on me.

I worked for five years before going to graduate school at Columbia University for my MFA. When I went to graduate school, I knew that I didn't want to be a perceptual painter, that I really wanted to work more abstractly. I didn't know how I was going to do that, but that was my goal. I started to take photographs and use those to bring more abstract images into my work. That was very short lived, and then I then started using images from literature and poems. They had a narrative, but they were singular images and I was presenting them in an abstract space. I was really trying to get away from a landscape space that I always used. I wanted a space that was more iconic.

Terry Winters came to speak to us and he talked about a notebook space. I realized that I had been recording dreams in a journal for many years. I thought the narratives in my dreams were like my own literature. So I started pulling single images out of my dreams and painting those. It began to get more and more abstract, but it was a very slow process. I started using a very old dictionary that my mother gave me that belonged to my grandmother that had graphic drawings. Some were botanical, some were geometric. At first, I juxtaposed both. Then slowly the botanical went out and I was left with the geometric. And so I started using geometry and their symbolic meanings as a language.

Tell us more about your process and unique treatment of color.

For about the last ten years, my ground colors—which is the first color that goes onto the canvas—has been a transparent color. My paintings basically have three layers. The first layer is the ground, which is often a transparent or a gradated color. The second layer is a central form, a central geometric form. And then the third layer is this lattice of beads that describes an image.

Let’s get into the weeds. Can you elaborate on the layers?

The first transparent layer is brushed on with oil paint using cold wax as a medium. I brush it on for hours sometimes, to get this really smooth ground. The cold wax and transparent color gives a luminosity to the ground that I'm after in every single painting. I think of the ground as inviolable—it's hard to repair it if something goes on top of it that is not right because it's transparent.

Then I put down the second layer, which is a geometric form and I use a stencil. The final, third layer is the geometric lattice. I'll draw the lattice on with a pastel pencil, then I bead with oil paint on top of that lattice. After the lattice dries, I can brush away the pastel pencil with a soft cloth so you just see the image.

And the form at the painting's center?

The central image is often a complementary color. When you put the complementary color on top of the ground color, there's a lot of movement and opticality and that all goes back to Alber's idea of relational color. Whereas if you put two colors next to each other, they pulse, you can see after-images if you're looking. There's a lot going on there energetically.

But color, you know, there's also a real intuitive quality to it. So it's not all about rational color theory ideas. It's either right or it's not. That's another reason I wait sometimes a long time between steps in my paintings, so I can figure out what color is going to best support the geometric shape that I'm going to put on. Does it maybe reflect a time of day or a season? I think about color a lot and it's a never-ending challenge.

Do you think of your work as in conversation with other artists or other forms of art?

I've been very interested in non-Western bodies of art since I was in graduate school. I went to the controversial 1984 Museum of Modern Art exhibition “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern and I was moved by the intensity of the traditional anonymous work. I started to think about how that work was made, as usually in a religious context or a spiritual context, and how those traditions were passed from generation to generation. I really liked the anonymity of it. I've always wanted to get that kind of feeling in my work.

I'm also very interested in a lot of artists that use geometry. People like Emma Kuntz, Hilma af Klimt, Dorothea Rockburne, and of course Monir Farmanfarmaian. I am interested in both Western and Eastern art, and I strive to bring both those two huge traditions of geometric work together in my own work.

Who are some of your influences?

Early on, contemporary artists that influenced me and helped me move into a more abstract space and were Susan Rothenberg and Jennifer Bartlett. I also love Agnes Martin, and I'm really in awe of her focus and her materiality and the way those two things joined together to make these incredible paintings. After the pandemic, I saw some of her paintings at the Pace Gallery in New York and they brought tears to my eyes in recognizing the intentionality that she painted with and the way she used the paint. Her whole process and devotion to her work is something that inspires me.

Hilma af Klimt is someone who I really look to. Not just in the work, but in her dedication to the work. I think a lot of women dedicated themselves to their work, whether they were getting any attention for it or not. And that kind of work dedication inspires me.

And then of course, all these bodies of Eastern work, they're not specific artists, but those traditions, the Indian Tantra drawings, Australian Aboriginal paintings, the Tibetan mandalas, the Navajo weavings, they've all inspired me over the years and I continue to look at that work.

You just mentioned a number of artists who are all women. You’ve spoken about geometry and abstraction as gendered in a masculine form initially in art history. Do you think of your practice as guided by a feminist vision, as refuting that in some way?

I'm a feminist. I studied feminist literature in both my undergraduate and graduate training and continue to read feminist literature. In some ways the painting department that I was in as an undergraduate, and even again in graduate school, was male dominated. And so a lot of my thinking came from the English departments. I don't think that my work is feminist in a political way. But I also think that to be a woman, to have children, and to paint, you have to be strong to continue.

I've always focused on women artists. And of course, I love many male artists, but especially after I had my first son, I decided that when I went into [New York] City, I would only look at women artists for an entire year because having a baby changed my life so much that I thought I wanted to look at work by women. I love reading and art history by women. It always buoys me up somehow. It comes from a different place. And I feel as if it's important for me to read it and to see what art by women because it speaks to me and it really keeps me going.

You’ve spoken before about the idea of aspiring for a radical clarity in your work? Can explain what that means for you and how it guides you?

Radical clarity means that the painting or the work on paper has a wholeness to it. And when I say wholeness, I mean that a person can take that image in in one fell swoop. That it’s iconic almost, where it can be seen and when you go away from it you can remember that image because it had clarity.

The other thing about radical clarity is that the form and the content reflect each other in a really even way. So the painting is not all about form, the painting is not all about content, but that the form and the content seem to come together and support each other and create this kind of radical clarity.

How do you want people to experience your work when they live with it in their home?

My main hope for someone who is living with my work is that it grows on them. That as they spend time with it, they see more in it, or they feel more in it from it. I hope that my work would be almost a place of quiet or meditative space for a viewer, whether it's in a home or if it's in an institution. It's a place where it is quiet and where the sound comes from the work.

What's the worst day job you've ever had?

I can't say this was a terrible job, but my day job between my undergraduate and my graduate program was in a technical publications department. My job title was technical illustrator and I learned how to do layout, paste up, use stencils and work really quickly. I didn't like the deadlines or how small and precise my work had to be, but they paid for art classes at night. And so during the day I worked very precisely for a job I didn’t like and at night I was flinging paint on the canvas at the Museum School in Boston. Eventually, I put together a portfolio from my night classes and applied for graduate school. In graduate school I continued to work with heavy paint and much more abstractly, but then slowly all my skills from that job crept into my work and somehow I became interested in geometry and being precise again.

Is there a failure or a creative accident that you learned from?

I've had a lot of failures over the years. One thing I did early on, which was a big mistake, was to put a lot of images onto one canvas, trying to evoke everything. Then I realized that paintings are really more like poems, not novels. And so after making a lot of muddy paintings, I started to present just one single image or maybe two images juxtaposed. And that was a huge shift in my work in the early 90s when I gave myself permission to have one central image. It became clear that I was someone who wanted to make spare, simple, iconic types of images rather than really real complex or gestural or complicated compositions.

How has being a parent influenced your work?

I was pregnant my last year in graduate school, so becoming a parent put the brakes on me in a lot of ways. But speaking of the idea of time and reverence, I loved being a parent. I love watching my sons grow. I learned a lot about time, because time slows down when you have small children. My sons are only 16 months apart, so I was in that phase where things were slow for quite a few years. I began to appreciate that and appreciate the way they were so interested in every small thing. I also wanted to show them that I was there with them so it slowed me down. And I tried to have a lot of intentionality in everything I did, whether I was baking a loaf of bread, or ice skating with them, anything that I would do.

And now they're adults and that's a whole other wonderful thing to have adult sons. They're interested in so many things and they bring so much into our lives now, kind of the opposite of the way we used to give them so much. Now they give us so much. And we’re grandparents. So I don't regret that at all.

When did you move to Maine?

We were renting a house in Hastings on Hudson, and my husband Jerry would travel by train to the city for work. I was working at night doing layout and paste up at the local newspaper and going to the studio in Yonkers at night, and on weekends. We were struggling, keeping it all going, and then a search firm asked Jerry if he would like to do what he was doing in Maine. Jerry’s a real outdoors person so New York was hard for him. So we decided to try it.

We came up here in 1990 and it was hard. For the first year or two, I had two small children and no job and no studio. I eventually got a studio, but I didn't have any friends or family. But the air and the light and the landscape, I loved it. I loved the winters and how clean it was. And of course, everything was so much less expensive at the time.

I also think that the huge night sky, which I had never really watched on a daily basis, affected my work. I think it's part of why I love to work on this black paper and these indigo grounds. I often think about how my work would have been different if we stayed in New York. And now it's 35 years later.

Tell us about your amazing studio that we’re in.

I've been in this space, which is in a renovated barn attached to our house, for 12 years now. We knew that when we bought the house that this old barn would someday be my studio, but it took quite a few years before we were able to do it. When I moved into the studio, I felt differently about my work because it was such a pristine and beautiful light-filled space.

What's the art community like in Portland, Maine?

It's a wonderful community, a great place to make work. I have a small circle of friends that I talk to about my work and we exchange studio visits. My husband is really important for me in terms of feedback. He's known my work now for decades and he also goes to exhibitions and we do all the looking together. Being a painter in the studio and not doing a lot of collaboration is somewhat lonely, but I actually embrace that. I'm a pretty solitary person.

What do you think the role of the artist is in society?

To tell the truth as they see it, as they know it, and as they feel it. And you tell the truth by digging very deep and finding wisdom somewhere. Personally, telling the truth comes from slowing down and separating myself for a period of time every day from the world and how fast it's moving and devoting myself to my practice. And bringing images from the collective unconscious to contemporary culture. All the research that I'm doing on images that have been used throughout history and presenting them now in a way that will hopefully communicate a sense of time, a sense of history, and a sense of our collective bank of images.

When AI comes for all of us, what words will it use to describe your work?

Geometry, color, the passage of time.

What does Friday mean for you?

It's a great day, it's the end of the week. It's often a night where you go out. Friday's a special day. A lot of times it's when the kids were younger, it would be a great meal that we would all have together and you don't have to get up the next morning. So there's sort of this feeling that it's a better day than Thursday. [chuckles]

About the Artist

Grace DeGennaro was born in Rockville Centre, NY (1956). Her paintings and works on paper have been internationally exhibited at galleries and institutions, including Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME ; Kentler Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY; Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY; EFA Project Space, New York, NY; Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY; Schema Projects, Brooklyn, NY; United States Embassy, Doha, Qatar; United States Embassy, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Africa; Visual Art Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; The Current, Stowe, VT; The Parsonage Gallery, Searsport, ME and Zero Station Gallery, Portland, ME. Her work is included in various permanent institutional and private collections, including Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY; Gund Collection, Boston, MA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; Ballinglen Museum of Contemporary Art, County Mayo, Ireland; Wellington Management, Boston, MA and Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA.

DeGennaro is the recipient of grants from the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ireland, Maine Arts Commission and New England Foundation for the Arts and a finalist for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting and Sculpture Grant. DeGennaro has completed two residencies at The Catwalk Institute, Catskills, NY and will be in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in the fall of 2025. She was a visiting artist at numerous colleges on the east coast, including Bowdoin College, Skidmore College and Colby College. She received an MFA in Painting and Sculpture from Columbia University and a BS in Fine Arts from Skidmore College. DeGennaro lives and works in Yarmouth, Maine.