Anthony Palocci, Jr., “Open Container #2” (2014), oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches (image courtesy Craig Stockwell)
Craig Stockwell (Keene, New Hampshire): This painting by Anthony Palocci sits in a central room in our house. A small painting, it occupies a lot of visual space on the wall. It is always shifting. I observe it at all times of day, in every different light, and it continually feeds me. During shutdown I have thought a lot about limitations, formal structures, doorways for imaginative action. This painting offers, repeatedly, those possibilities. And it is such an absurdly humble, simple, handmade painting — very physical in both its presence and its making.
As our art world shrinks and collapses, I have worked this winter/spring to just keep going. Surprisingly, I found that small, structured yet provisional paintings, like this one, are what I turn to both for looking and making. It is a small painting that activates domestic space; a painting shaky in its making yet firm in its presence, resistant to aesthetics yet rooted in art historical reference. Anthony is a Boston-based painter and I purchased this painting from a show at the former et al Projects in Bushwick during the year I spent in New York at the Sharpe-Walentas Space Program, 2013-14.
My work during these recent months has consisted of small, handmade, precarious formalist paintings, which I mailed to people (selected from Instagram) around the country. I reached 100 and am now done with that particular melancholy project. The luminous, shape-shifting quality of Anthony’s painting was an ongoing inspiration for what a painting might be at this time.