Tracey Knapp :: Angela Basile

Girl with Pearl Buttons

The current work of painter Angela Basile recasts portraits of strangers from old photographs found on eBay, recalling an American past. The characters remain posed for conventional portraits, delicately outlined, unnamed in a different time and place. Perhaps the most stunning contrast in these paintings is their vivid, conflicting backgrounds, which employ graffiti and other contemporary visualizations. The estranged background space denies the subjects a predictable sense of place, creating a fascinating dynamic between the real and the imagined. What I love most about these new works is how Basile allows the present to blur into the past: the bold colors of a background may appear in the tie of an unknown man. Graffiti bleeds into the realistic portrait of a young girl, forging a connection between the two disparate styles. Two senior men, painted in pastel tones, stand within an unexpected burst of bright yellow flowers. These techniques also tease the viewer to consider how the brightness of the background might argue with the more subtle, detailed foreground portraits. Are the picturesque subjects enclosed in a surreal container, or is there truly a background and foreground?

I’ve been close to Angela Basile’s artwork since we were both Studio Art majors at Syracuse University in the 1990s. Our long-standing friendship has been grounded in relationship to our creative endeavors. In her previous project, Basile’s paintings were much quieter—they included images of muted mid-century houses, anthropomorphic yet void of any humans. This departure returns to some of Basile’s previous historical subject matter. Still, it embraces bold, contemporary techniques paired with the images of the unknown and forgotten, resulting in works that reflect the voice of a painter who embraces both nostalgia and a turn towards the future.
                                                                                    ~Tracey Knapp

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Angela Basile is a painter and sculptor. She has an MFA from Parsons School For Design and a BFA in painting from Syracuse University. She was a 2012 NYFA Painting Fellow and an artist-in-residence in Csopak, Hungary in 2007. The artist lives and works in the Hudson River Valley in Rhinebeck, NY.