Fairfield, CT - The public is invited to a reception at the Bruce S. Kershner Gallery in the Fairfield Public Library on Thursday, February 10 at 5:30 to 7:30 for “Color Play”, the art of Earl Grenville Killeen, Dionne Pia and Emily Teall. The show runs from February 5 to April 2. The Fairfield Library is at 1080 Old Post Road.
Earl Grenville Killeen
After service in the Navy, Earl attended The Art Students’ League of New York during the 1970s. A resident of Clinton, CT since 1981, Earl continues to be active in the arts community, having initiated the Shoreline Arts Alliance’s Annual Juried Show for regional high school students and annual Founder’s Award to be shared by an art teacher and a student. He is the author of The North Light Book of Acrylic Painting Techniques and the recipient of Individual Artist’s grants from The Connecticut Commission on the Arts and The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts , as well as an Artist’s Fellowship Award from the Connecticut Office of the Arts.
Earl has exhibited in many area galleries and museums. In 2016, a cancer diagnosis led him to paint with a passion and persistence that produced over forty watercolors in less than a year, and he is currently working on his seventh series. He has received awards for his art from New Britain Museum of American Art, the New Haven Paint and Clay Club, and others.
Earl says, “From an early age, art was for me a portal out of the feelings and circumstances of a stress-filled childhood. Studying the paintings in my treasured art books took me to a transformed reality frozen in time; and I was finding an identity I wanted for myself in the process of creating. ‘' He has been inspired by the art of Van Gogh, Goya, Dali, and Ben Shahn, but he says, “I believe that to be an artist, you have to be a visionary; to be a visionary, you have to ignore other people’ versions of vision... I seem to have emerged from defensively painting in metaphors to showing myself in my human form, with a dreamlike sensibility and allusive elements evoking my vulnerability and, perhaps, self-empowerment. Now I find myself Outside the Lines of any particular theme, subject matter, or approach to my work...I’m curious to see where my drawing-board wanderings will take me...”
Dionne Pia
Dionne is a floral designer and manager of Floral Petals in Bedford Hills, New York and is a Weston resident. She received a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and spent a year in Rome, Italy attending the European Honors Program. Her career path includes photo editing for the travel industry, graphic design, floral design, and marketing – producing logos, brand awareness, brochures, stage designs, and illustrations – and fulfilling fine art commissions.
Emily Teall has a BFA in visual arts from Cornell University and an MA in human rights studies from Columbia University. She is a Riverside, Connecticut-based multimedia artist with particular interests in installation art and oil painting. She also currently teaches visual art courses to 5th-12th graders at Fusion Academy in Greenwich. She says, “I am especially passionate about combining human rights with the arts and with art education.”