Joseph Marioni
Joseph Marioni was the painter of liquid light. He was a modern painter working out of the tradition of Ryman and Rothko. For the past 40 years he has practiced the fine art of painting with acrylic paint on linen canvas over wooden support. The presentation of a single color image in his work is accomplished by layering translucent and transparent layers of liquid color over the field of linen. Marioni said he was a glaze painter like Vermeer, not Rembrandt, in that Rembrandt often paints his subjects in full light and then used his final glazes to close down the light, Vermeer, on the other hand, builds an environment of light with color – his subject is the light. Marioni continued the mandate of modernism for clarity and full disclosure of the form itself. It is the painted quality of his color that is the image of his form. In the architecture of painting, function follows light and Marioni’s subject is liquid light.
