The studio is quiet now, in its phase of summer sleep. Easels are propped against the wall on their spindly legs just as they were left in the almost orderly jumble of the last cleanup of the last painting class of 2001. It's not the quiet of a weekend during the school year; or the expectant lull that comes between classes; it's something deeper. What hap[pens in this room in the course of a year happens only once, only in that year, and never again quite like that. The quiet here echoes with the life that has recently filled it to bursting, with a certian blend of voices, gazes, smiles, a certain quality of combined focus, a certain atmosphere of intensity or lightheartedness, a particular chemistry unique to a time now passed, a time to remember and to celebrate.

This portfolio of paintings is a tribute to a remarkable year, and to some of the vital characters who together made it what it was. Their paintings speak for them better than I can, capturing as they do the light of particular minds, the moods of transient hours, the distinctive rhythms of life and creativity that pulsed together here, this year.

Angelo Bellfatto