Arts & Entertainment

Artist Finds Inspiration in Cranford

Resident Stephen D'Amato depicts town architecture on canvas.

Artist and Cranford resident Stephen D'Amato, 50,  finds beauty in the everyday scenes around him – namely the streets and old buildings that populate downtown.

"I walk around a lot around here – it's good for me because there's so much I find interesting in this town," he said." I really like the architecture and the fact that they've been here since the 1900s, and some earlier than that. They have more character to them than modern buildings. "

Yesterday D'Amato stood painting at an easel on North Avenue East, detailing a mixture of light and shadows that show up on the corner of Union Avenue and Alden Street. He was doing what oil artists call an 'underpainting' – brushing in the light-and-dark tones of the scene first before adding the color. 

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 "The old masters used to do this all the time that's the way they worked," he said, adding that for him, it can be difficult to remember that the colors in a scene are not all that needs to be depicted on the canvas. This technique helps. 

Just as he find aging architecture inspiring, D'Amato is influenced strongly by painters of previous eras who depict realistic scenery.

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"These days it's more important to be conceptual with art, it's about the ideas and concepts. But I'm looking toward more temporary realism but with a strong tradition of the past," he explained. 

 While he began oil painting only four years ago, D'Amato started drawing when he was 6. He remembers sketching his father while he watched football on television in his family's Pompton Plains home.

"I remember thinking, I'll title it 'football is serious business.' Because he was always so intense," he said.

In addition to drawing, D'Amato explored his creative side during his teen years, playing keyboards in a band and painting watercolor. He attended Syracuse University  for art and majored in painting.

Since then, he's worked as a truck driver, a graphic artist at various firms and taught art around the tri-state area. But  one thing has remained the same; he continues to do his own original pieces in his spare time. 

"I like the experience of painting and drawing," he said.


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