Art and architecture have always gone hand-in-hand for Edgardo Abello, the October featured artist, along with Carol Staub, at Gallery 14 in Vero Beach. Abello’s show ‘Oil and Water’ and Staub’s show ‘Then and Now’ will remain on display at Gallery 14 throughout the month of October.
“Painting, and arts in general, has always been my main interest,” says Abello. “But growing up in Colombia, my father always pushed the idea of getting a professional degree in architecture or something like that, more practical.”
Although he would heed his father’s wish by studying architecture at Montgomery College in Maryland, he says he was always happiest when finding ways to appease his artistic nature. He would later obtain a BFA from the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University in Boston.
“So I ended up with an interesting combination. With my architectural knowledge, I started doing architectural renderings and presentations, which was a more artistic way of channeling my passion for painting,” says Abello. Those exquisitely detailed renderings were primarily done in watercolor, pen and ink, and graphite pencil.
“I would take the floor plans and then create a beautiful image of what the project was going to look like.”
After working for a firm in Virginia for a number of years, Abello founded his own company, Artistic Visions, in 1994. While he still works as the firm’s CEO, he says the business has changed considerably over the years.
“With time, the whole industry has shifted towards more computer-generated graphics; that’s what clients want. It’s very seldom that I get a request from a client to do a watercolor presentation. It’s now mostly animation and virtual reality, and hyper-realistic renderings,” Abello explains.
His brother, Aquileo, moved here from Columbia three years ago as a partner in the business to assist with that transition.
“He’s a great partner; he’s the only person who could put up with me,” says Abello. “We’re combining a lot of different techniques and kind of bringing them into the architectural presentation field, with some film industry techniques to create more interesting visuals.”
Abello, who currently resides with wife Susan in Stuart, has relocated several times since coming to the United States in 1978 as an exchange student. One of those prior moves was to Vero Beach, where he became acquainted with Gallery 14.
The October exhibit features a half-dozen examples of Abello’s works in watercolor, and more recently, oils.
A bright red scarf billowing in the wind being held by a woman in a white dress captures the eye as soon as you enter Gallery 14.
“She was so gracious; a really classy lady. She was very nice to pose for me. We went to the House of Refuge in Stuart, and I took a bunch of pictures and came up with this one. It was a little intimidating, putting all that red in there,” Abello admits. “I’m more used to neutral colors. But it was fun.”
The same attention to detail employed for his architectural renderings is exhibited in his paintings.
“The architectural presentations usually are deadline driven, so I can’t spend too much time waiting for paint to dry. I learned to paint fast, and watercolors are very quick and very effective. I learned to identify values and colors and things like that very quickly, so I can put together paintings quickly, especially watercolor,” he says.
“It’s very realistic. Even when I try to do very loose painting of scenes, they turn out to be very realistic. Working with the shadows and the values and all these things, just kind of make it jump out at you as very realistic,” says Abello.
“In general, I don’t labor over the painting, so they’re always quick, always fresh. I’m not the kind of person who must spend hundreds of hours doing a painting. I tend to think fast. It’s just the way that I got used to working,” he explains.
“But I kept going farther and farther and started adding more detail to the quick watercolors that I was doing for architecture, and I ended up coming up with some really nice styles. But then, I’m always experimenting. I always do something different; I never get stuck with trying to come up with a gimmicky thing that I’m using over and over. As soon as I try something, I try something else,” Abello says with a laugh.
An example of a new technique he is experimenting with is the use of a pallet knife, as displayed in an oil painting in the show of a pair of pelicans, calmly bobbing in a deep aqua blue sea.
“With watercolor the texture of the paper is pretty flat. So I’d like to see more texture, and I’m experimenting a little more, trying to create a fairly detailed painting with a pallet knife,” said Abello.
He says he often considers his subject matters to be beautiful moments in time, which is clearly evident in the show. One sumptuous scene is captured in an oil painting of his children peering into tidal pools in the Florida Keys, sailboats dotting a misty horizon.
“I just wanted to keep the soft feel of it,” says Abello.
He also has a keen eye for photography and uses that talent as a basis for much of his work, such as a watercolor of a pair of well-used and seemingly forgotten old trucks against a snowy backdrop.
“This was up in Northfield, Massachusetts,” said Abello. “This field had, there must have been 10 trucks, and they were all like that; old rusty trucks. I just thought it was such a great picture and I wanted to experiment with the snow. The paper comes through the very light washes of watercolor.”
Subtle nuances and particulars are evidenced throughout the piece, especially in the intricately detailed grill work on the trucks, and their faded signage.
“I start with the wet washes first and do the backgrounds. It may look nothing like what the final is going to look like. And then I start doing more dry brush on top of it,” Abello explains.
Although oils are newer for him, he says he enjoys using watercolors and oils equally; the decision is sometimes made for him based on the amount of time he has.
“Watercolors I tend to do more, just because I have a full-time job and don’t always have a chunk of time. With watercolors, I can pick up the brush and a couple of things of water and go at it. With oils I like to have a little more time. I like to have four or five hours at least or maybe a weekend.”
Photos by Kaila Jones
