Santa Clara’s Triton Museum of Art has much to recommend itself, and a current show of Old Masters-style work by Southern California’s Domenic Cretara is a prime example.
Painting for many decades in the extreme chiaro scuro style of Baroque maestro Caravaggio, Cretara is a supple realist who moves deftly across his richly-conceived figures like the golden light grazing across his canvases. The subjects of many of Cretara’s pieces include vernacular gatherings of people—caught in mundane acts of reading, working, engaged in quiet conversation, all seemingly waiting for some impending epiphany. He captures the unglamorous themes that fill our days, often without being observed. But Cretara is a master of observation and his brush convincingly rounds out the edges of daydream and communion.
Using a bold palette, he coaxes piquant contrasts of light and shadow that energize his realistically-modeled figures. Cretara makes his quiet figurative studies and dramatic compositions appear effortless, and yet the success of these works requires infinite skill. One particular example of Cretara’s art Gathering (above), deliciously comments on Courbet’s famous The Painter’s Studio, by surrounding the artist—Cretara in a robust self-portrait—with what we must assume to be friends and family of all ages and in a variety of attitudes. It is a charming tour de force by a man who has devoted his career to articulating the unnoticed mysteries of everyday life. Domenic Cretara – 20 Years of Drawing and Painting, shows until April 14.
The Triton is located at 1505 Warburton Ave, at Lincoln and El Camino Real. Admission is FREE, and the Museum is open six days a week — closed Monday.
