2006
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I happened to meet James Gielfeldt this summer while my friend, Grazia Azzali, who is also an artist, was here from Italy. We met at the Wyland gallery in Niagara Falls. If you know James personally you would agree with me that his size and stature are almost fear inspiring. But, beneath his robust exterior lies the ever so delicate soul of an artist. Unfortunately, our conclusions are drawn only from an individual exterior, but this is only a façade, especially for James. We ended up talking together throughout the evening about what art is and about what makes an artist great, especially in the Niagara Region, but also in Canada and the world in general. I am glad we had such conversations because quite a few interesting things have been said. He invited me to see his works posted on his website and he also asked me to say what I honestly thought about it.
I did enjoy visiting his website, because I saw something different. As one may judge a persons exterior, someone may also judge the “exterior of a painting”. For someone who at first sees his works the impression can be that, this artist, is experimenting with different techniques or styles because of his personal necessity of finding his own. But a common denominator is clearly visible in his paintings, it is the innate sense of a gothic perception of his subjects. The so called Folklore series, particularly the Venus series, are what have made me realize that this artist has inside of him, jealously preserved until now the necessity of recalling and reanalyzing this period of human history, as well as all of art history, something which is appreciated only because of the European architectural evidence and “some famous painters”. He is the first artist that senses this contemporary exigency to analyze a period of history that in my opinion has been almost forgotten. We remember always the artists of the Renaissance such as Michelangelo, Raffaello, Leonardo da Vinci as the greatest artists that ever lived, but what about artists of the gothic period that have created these greater artists, the precursors of the Renaissance. Artists like: Giotto, Masaccio or Mantegna. James has understood that what is vital for an artist is to connect with his “ancestral heritage”. We try to forget that, as Thomas Stearns Elliot once wrote: “ …no artists of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone, you must set him for contrast or comparison, among the dead”. This is what James is looking for: not a style or a technique but a relation between his work and the work of his ancestors.
Alessandra Fierimonte
Alessandra Fierimonte was born in Thiene on the region of Vicenza in 1978 and graduated from the Art Institute of Cittadella Michele Fanoli in the region of Padova (Padua) in 1998.