Hard-Edge Still-life Paintings

Photo-realist still life painting of lush green lotus plants on a soft grey sky background "Lotus Number Twenty-Eight", painted by Frank DePietro in 201...

"Strengths and Weaknesses" is a portrait exploring several elements and strategies that fascinate the artist – notably the performance anxiety induced by simply being an artist, staring down the freight train of art history as it hurtles toward you every time you pick up a brush. Luck? Talent? Maybe. There are signposts and guides in this painting, of course (Cubism! Surrealism! Brancusi! Guston!), but they can clobber you too if you're not careful. Even the phrase "strengths and weaknesses" smacks of compromises and rationalization – deadly to an artist looking to construct their own integral world. "Strengths and Weaknesses" is an acrylic and charcoal on canvas measuring 54" tall by 54" wide. It was included in the artist's solo show "Comedy Cellar" at Freight + Volume Gallery, New York City in July 2018. (See last photograph for an installation view.) From Daniel Gerwin – "Schenck’s color is vibrant, wild, saturated to the point of overheating, and altogether brilliant in the balancing of hues, temperatures, shapes, and color quantities. The paintings have a remarkable coherence for their dizzying juxtaposition of so many small chromatic passages." (Essay: The Anxiety and the Ecstasy) Peter Schenck...

"The Conversation" is an oil painting on canvas measuring 54" tall by 54" wide, and a key artwork among Peter Schenck's many remarkable paintings address...

"Toys In The Attic" addresses subject matter that continues to fascinate the artist – on one hand the tools of painting, drawing and art making – brushes, pens, pencils and crayons. ...

"Endless Summer" is a well-known artwork among Peter Schenck's many remarkable paintings, and addresses subject matter that continues to engage the artist – the tools of painting and art making, including brushes, tubes of paint and palette knife are arranged in a child-like tableau alongside brightly colored and eroticized inflatables of the hand, the breast, the dollop of paint... And all of it reminiscent of toys on a beach under blue skies where anything should be possible. From Peter Schenck: "Endless Summer mixes up the time-honored tradition of the still life with my feelings on an artist's attachment to their tools – brush, palette, paint – an attachment at times bordering on erotic, at times feeling awkward and all-thumbs. I was also taking on Tom Wesselmann's concentrated still lives of the 60s and 70s, banal and erotic all at once." "Endless Summer" is an acrylic paint on canvas measuring 30" tall by 25" wide. It was included in the group show "Sitting Still" at Bravin Lee Programs Gallery, New York City in October 2017, and showed alongside work by Fairfield Porter, Thomas Nozkowski, Janet Fish, Robert DeNiro Sr...