Comments on some of the works by Jerry Ross in the exhibit

 

"The Arrest of Bruce Beyer", 1998, is a painting creared in an Italian rennaisance style depicting the moment when federal marshalls broke into the Unitarian church in Buffalo in 1968 and arrested nine antiwar and antidraft protesters, including Bruce Beyer, son of a prominent Buffalo family who had taken sanctuary in the Church.

 

Portrait of Jerry Ross' mother Jeanette ("Geraldine") Gross. The painting depicts a positive, happy young woman. She struggled since her teens with a bipolar condition and hospitalizations. Despite her difficulties, Jeanette was known among family members and friends as a sweet. loving mother of three. She had an interest in the arts since high school. She was resonsible for Jerry's art education, enrolling him at weekend youth classes at the Buffalo Art Institute on Utica Avenue and later some private lessons with Tony Sisti. She had impeccable handwriting and, under different circumstances, probably would have been an artist herself.

 

"Macchia Numero Uno" is based on Jerry's research into the painting ideas of the "I Macchiaioli", the Tuscan school of Itay during the Risorgimento (1860s). Central to these ideas is the concept of 'macchia" (spot or stain) which enables artists to "sketch" in line, mass, or pure color the scene before them, capturing "the effect" or impression before it changes. This is an Italian school of plein air painting that existed ten years prior to French Impressionism but which was influenced by Constable and the Barbizon painters. Jerry has taken the core idea of macchia and has extended it. The initial darker "stain" or large shape composition is flattened, often scraped out multiple times, and rubbed out until the brushstrokes of lighter colors can float on its surface. Dabs of paint are then placed all over the canvas but strategically in order to reinforce the original macchia. The result is a more abstract landscape but somehow closer to the "true" scene in its capture of chiaroscuro of nature and the gestural treatment keeps it fresh and alive.

 

"Silvan Ridge"

 

Portrait of Martin Sostre. Martin was owner of the Afro-Asian Bookstore in Buffalo and was charged with riot and selling drugs during the urban riots that happened in Buffalo in July, 1967. His story is doumented in a film called Frame-Up by Pacific Street Films. Jerry organized and led a Martin Sostre Defense Committee in Buffalo. This effort was assisted by Workers World Party (Buffalo branch) and Amnesty International. The Russian writer Sakarov became involved. Sostre's sentence of 41 years was commuted by the Governor of New York State when police responsible for his frame-up were caught stealing drug "evidence" from a police drug locker. Sostre is one of the nation's leading black anarchists.

 

Coburg Hills. A plein air painting of a location near Eugene, Oregon. A favorite place to paint, Jerry has several works in the show that were painted in this area. This painting reveals a style with grear affinity to the Italian I Macchiaioli school of Tuscany.

 

Portrait of Andrea Guerra. An Italian friend of Jerry and Angela's living near Bologna. He is a tree doctor and very politically savy resident of the area where GIs fought during WWII on the Gothic Line.

 

Portrait if Umberto Coromaldi.

 

Portrait of Irma. The mother of close friends in Rome, Italy.

 

Angels Flight Road, the location of a plein air workshop taught once a year by Jerry.

"The Italian Soldier" -- a soldier posted at the main Cathedral in Milan, the Duomo.

"Buonconvento", Tuscany. A street scene in Tuscany.