05 Mar Just One Look

No, you haven’t been there. But you think you have; in fact, you might commit perjury in an attempt to prove it.

That is the mystery of the art of Francis DiFronzo, a Pew Fellow, whose paintings defy realism and entice the observer to sincerely believe they have seen the scenes and walked the sites that DiFronzo gave birth to in imagination.

That Long Black Cloud is Coming Down | Oil over Watercolor, Acrylic and Gouache on Panel | 30 x 60 inches | 2023 | J. Willott Gallery, Palm Desert

The divide between the railcar in County Line and the one the observer is convinced he has glimpsed along the highways and byways of the American West is almost entirely invisible. And thus the confusion, or perhaps awe, when the observer learns it is all DiFronzo’s figurative figment.

Catch DiFronzo only if you can. An admirer of filmmakers Federico Fellini, who could be termed a magician realist, and surrealist David Lynch, DiFronzo is inclined to beckon art enthusiasts into the world under examination only to insist they talk amongst themselves as they judge whether it is inviting, habitable, elusive — or a mix of more than those three.

Valley Kingdom | Oil over Watercolor, Acrylic and Gouache on Panel | 31 x 25 inches | 2025 | Evoke | ontemporary, Santa Fe

The California realist’s work is reminiscent of America’s historic but, strangely, current artist superstars such as Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper.

DiFronzo and those artists of whom he says he is “under the influence” see and depict in the ordinary what is extraordinary. There is no landscape, building, or object that is beneath the notice of the penetrating eye of an artist who looks on truth and is not afraid.

The wreckage of a dream about America that once celebrated such fare as flashy cars, small diners, big barns, and freshly painted railcars overfull of can-do entrepreneurism and industry is everywhere depicted by DiFronzo.

While Far Off Stars Quiver, Blinking Dire Messages in Code | Oil over Watercolor and Gouache on Panel | 36 x 72 inches | 2021 | Private Collection

Overarching that visible feast are the words of all time. For example, The Annunciation may look like a moonlit sonata in oil but it refers to the biblical one. And that orb in the night sky? None other than Gabriel.

Get with DiFronzo if you have any questions. But don’t expect him to give you the answers. He encourages you to — what? Do that for yourself; that is, press into the paintings and do not fly from them.

DiFronzo is truly kind and too gentlemanly to wink. But he should. He paints in a tradition that spans centuries if not millennia. Greek and Roman artists, after all, strived with gods and men to create an eyewitness account of what they saw and, paradoxically, what they did not see.

And so, in antiquity, arises the account of Zeuxis, whose painting was so convincing that a bird sought to make off with a grape whose only authenticity was artifice.

There is more to DiFronzo himself than first meets the eye. He is formally and, by disposition, trained and educated. He can boast — but does not — of a master’s degree in painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and a bachelor’s degree in painting from California State University, Fullerton.

County Line | Oil over Watercolor, Acrylic and Gouache on Panel | 36 x 63 inches | 2025 | Private Collection

He is too intensely interested in the thoughts and feelings of observers of his works to paint in empyreal realms where no mortal could follow. But he could. And it is possible he would — if the joy of art and the love of art enthusiasts was not in him.

He was thrice struck by amazement with the universal and particular concept commonly referred to as “the eye of the artist” when he went on pilgrimage to see firsthand areas depicted by Wyeth, a realist painter whose oeuvre drew scholars to add “regionalist” to the appellation.

It was then that DiFronzo saw the keenness of an artist’s ability to fuse the place, people, or items before him with the scene unreeling in his imagination.

The Mystery (Part 6) | Oil over Watercolor and Gouache on Panel | 17 x 17 inches | 2025 | Private Collection

Of Wyeth’s poetic license with landscapes and buildings, DiFronzo said, “He took windows from one building and installed them in another. He placed grass where there was none.

“I began to see that realism can actually be a wonderful tool of tricking people (as the bird with the grape). The artist there — and here — can fool even nature.”

DiFronzo would know. For he has, like a mesmerist, fooled those of us who are most exacting in our insistence on the truth, sometimes referred to as “Just the facts, ma’am.”

DiFronzo is a painter with few parallels. If you must drag bragging rights out of him, consider he was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for painting in 2004 and, in more than a nod to popular culture and its icons, his works were featured prominently throughout the second season of Sony Pictures’ series “Better Call Saul.”

The Annunciation (Part 2) | Oil over Watercolor and Gouache on Panel | 28 x 48 inches | 2019 | Private Collection

Represented by gallerists from Los Angeles (Billis/Williams Gallery) to Miami (Stanek Gallery) and from New York City (George Billis Gallery) to Santa Fe (Evoke Contemporary), DiFronzo gets around. His solo shows periodically feature series of paintings not unlike Claude Monet’s series of the cathedral at Rouen or his multitude of views of London’s Thames River.

This year’s offerings include a solo exhibit, The Calling, at Stanek Gallery and Somerville Manning Gallery in Greenville, Delaware. Evoke Contemporary intends to again place DiFronzo upfront and personal in an exhibition planned for 2027.

There is nothing static about DiFronzo, even in pictures that present images that might otherwise be inane. An example? Powerlines and a single, downward burning bulb, its stark extrusion in one of a nocturne series called The Mystery. The powerline piece? Part 6. Let us say no more about mystery lest it becomes one no more. Instead, look, and you shall receive.

The Night is Always Falling (Part 1) | Oil over Watercolor and Gouache on Panel | 34 x 49 inches | 2020 | Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville

As with so many objects or ideas of immense value, DiFronzo’s oeuvre didn’t emerge ex nihilo. His years of study and execution, professors, mentors, and others who declined to allow him to nap in mediocrity means his works will march on when DiFronzo is granted eternal rest.

Image-bearer, teacher, and poet in paint, DiFronzo cajoles observers where he does not outright order them to look and then to see, to think and then to soar in the heady atmosphere of ideas, to feel and then to relish the measureless dimensions of the human heart.

“The less I give you, the more you have,” he said.

That may re-open a dialectic that began long ago or evoke the image of an ancient Greek philosopher. But, as such a philosopher would propose, you decide.