Barberini’s Thistle #2, 2026

John Capitano  

"In 1986 I began to paint using a system of chance to select colors. This strategy is as follows:

I choose an area to be painted. I then throw a dart at the dartboard bull's eye. When a numbered wedge is struck, I then paint with its predetermined hue.
 

Carried out in a playful spirit, this arbitrary system results in unique color combinations. To resolve a painting my game-playing shifts to problem-solving, still maintaining this chance process.

I continue to work within this process because my artistic concerns still revolve around elements of play and discovery. However, while my concern is with visual dynamics - the play of color, visual effects and the visceral nature of paint, its various applications and interactions - I am intrigued by the tension between these strictly painterly or abstract concerns and representational imagery.

I have worked through a wide range of imagery including still life whose status historically as low art makes it an appropriate place to explore freely. More recently I have returned to even more banal subjects that also lend a sense of humour to my work. Confronting the mundane nature of everyday life, I am representing everything from the kitchen sink and its usual forms of disarray to the formidable state of the bathroom - a rare subject in the realm of art.

Though the playful nature of the subject compliments the process, there often remains a tension intrinsic to this same process - the tension between chaos and order, struggle and play, indeterminacy and self-expression."