Dante's forest

Erik Feely at 101 Art Gallery

Doubles Line

The paintings of Erik Feely walk a fine line. They travel, tirelessly, through Dante's dark wood, the setting of The Inferno. Here, no traveller returns.

Light and dark meet: they form the central crisis and theme. The palette becomes a kind of Technicolor explosion, a kaleidoscope of embers which retreat, hotly, into a classical sense of painting. This is still, perfectly composed and--without a doubt--great work from an artist who is in dialogue with the Baroque painters and others.

All Soul's Night, St Joseph

Feely also regards his work as a battle of ideas.

"The things I read gradually pervade my process and the final product, in this case my art, is the result of an anxious battle between intellectual actions and visceral rejections," he says in a preview for his recent show at 101 Art Galley. 

"I like making things, beautiful things if possible or at least meaningful things. I believe in the studio. I like the idea of becoming and as such I always push myself along the paths of experimentation. While the subject remains constant the accident can enjoy new experiences."

The Inferno was an influence:

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.
Ah, how hard it is to tell
the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh --
the very thought of it renews my fear!
It is so bitter death is hardly more so.
But to set forth the good I found
I will recount the other things I saw.
How I came there I cannot really tell,
I was so full of sleep
when I forsook the one true way.
But when I reached the foot of a hill,
there where the valley ended
that had pierced my heart with fear,
looking up, I saw its shoulders
arrayed in the first light of the planet
that leads men straight, no matter what their road.

"I decided to read it again: many of the works are based on sparks of light in the darkness," Feely says. "I delight in many external stimuli while painting: the wind and the surrounding sounds all enrich the visual phenomena, either those before me or others stored in my subconscious. Internally, I am conscious of a Classical muse which never abandons." 

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

Divali, Southern Main Road

Car Lime, Maracas