You’ll swear you can smell the lime, feel the doughy thickness of the grapefruit rinds and drink the bubbly sweet orange juice. But it’s all watercolor.
Artist Frank Spino has painted these images so well that they nearly palpate with freshness. They are all part of “Realism at Home and Abroad,” his one-man show running through March 27 at Gallery 14 in Vero Beach.
But don’t be embarrassed if you lick your lips. Spino, who lives in Melbourne Village, is used to that.
“I get a lot of ‘It’s so good I want to eat it.’ ‘It’s so juicy I want to drink it,’” says Spino.
Masterfully wrought, these sensuous paintings exude vibrant color and subtle shading. The crystal clear and delicate lines serve as visual relief to the explosive sense of joy in the still-lifes.
Beth Anne Fairchild, chairman of guest artist shows at Gallery 14, expects the show to be a popular one because of the subject matter as well as the artistry.
“I asked Frank a couple years ago if he would do it,” says Fairchild. “I love his work; the detail, the emphasis on clear, bright colors. Especially here in Vero Beach, they would be wonderful on somebody’s wall.”
What is especially astounding is that Spino, 70, has only been giving voice to the fine artist within him for the past 10 years. Before that he was a sign painter, creating logos, murals and even billboards.
Gifted at drawing, he first tried his hand at fine art at age 17 while living in Ohio. (Raised in a military family, he attended 13 different grade schools.) He took a stretched canvas and three tubes of oil paint – blue, green and brown – to the side of a river and started painting.
“It was grotesque,” he says with a laugh. “I’m sure I tore it up and burned it. I had no idea what I was doing. I was in a foreign land and couldn’t speak the language.”
He studied art while attending Ohio University but still struggled as an artist. So in the 1970s, to make a living, he started a sign business.
When the fine artist inside kept pestering him, he turned to the late Eliot McMurrough, an accomplished artist living in Melbourne. McMurrough, in turn, brought in famed art teacher Henry Hensche from Provincetown, Mass.
Hensche showed Spino the tools to actually see what he was looking at, especially with color and light.
“Henry opened my eyes,” Spino says. “I traveled to Provincetown a couple of seasons to study with him.”
Hensche taught students to understand light sources and various types of light, such as sunny, rainy or overcast, by placing blocks outdoors and having students paint them, over and over and over.
“It wasn’t like looking at a face, where you get caught up in the personality,” Spino explains. “You just saw color and light. You learned your light sources and that every color has to relate to that light source. To see those colors as they really are.”
While it was a major leap forward, Spino needed to make a living for his young family and continued Spino Signs as a successful business for many years.
When he finally did give full voice to the artist within, he was like a wound-up rubber band, ready to be launched.
Indeed, within the last 10 years, he has exhibited to acclaim throughout the world.
Out of 10,000 who entered the Zhuijiajiao International Watercolor Exhibition, his first international show, Spino was one of 100 non-Chinese artists to be accepted. He has since appeared in numerous shows around the world, including: World Watercolor Masters in Holland, International Watercolor III & IV in Greece and the Biennial International Prize Marche D’Acqua in Italy.
He has exhibited with the National Watercolor Society, the American Watercolor Society and the Florida Watercolor Society, and his paintings have graced the covers of Watercolor Artist magazine and the hardbound book, “Splash 14: The Best of Watercolor.”
Spino says he is attracted to watercolor because of its luminosity.
“It’s transparent for the most part. You look through pigment at the white paper, which bounces light back to you. You can see through the thin films (of color).”
He was drawn to citrus imagery because of the bright colors.
“When I had free time and energy, looking for inspiration, typically I’d wander around the house until something grabbed my attention,” he explains. “I would end up in the kitchen because of the fruit, the form and colors. So I often painted fruit.”
Once, when his wife, Susan Brown, was squeezing juice, he asked her to go outside so he could get photos of her doing it. The resulting painting won a third-place prize with the National Watercolor society.
“That set me on the path. I’m known for my citrus and it’s been on the cover of national magazines and the biggest book of watercolor. It gained the most notoriety.”
Although he occasionally entertains the notion of wanting to be known as more than a “citrus painter,” he says that at a show in Italy, a couple of well-known watercolorists told him how much they admired his citrus paintings.
“Artists tend to find a groove and stay there and pump that out,” he says. “So I said to myself, ‘Why am I avoiding it? I’m going to go back and paint some more fruit.’”
Spino’s landscape and figurative works are imbued with the same provocative fullness and dialogue; his portraiture is especially luscious.
There is the evocative painting “What Now, My Love,” which shows an embrace between two lovers, and the heartwarming painting “Mollie,” depicting the toothless grin of his granddaughter playing in a bathtub.
“Up to this point, I’ve painted what I wanted to paint. I wish I had time to go strictly into portraiture and figurative. I don’t know if I have time to go into it,” he says.
“I’m at a juncture. I’ve done this, had success, seen what level I’ve risen to. Which is the question at the beginning: Can I do it? How well can I do it? How does it measure up?”
“Realism at Home and Abroad: Watercolors by Frank Spino” runs March 3-27 at Gallery 14, with receptions scheduled 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, March 5, and Friday, March 6, during the First Friday Gallery Stroll.
For more information, visit Gallery14VeroBeach.com.