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Born Fernando de Jesus Oliveira in Bahia, Brazil in 1946, the artist who goes by the simple name of Ferjo is one of the most dynamic and intriguing artists on the contemporary American scene. His surreal, even metaphysical way with a canvas has been lauded earlier, with Ferjo winning the prestigious Cresson Scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the New York council for the Arts Award for Excellence in portraiture. However, portraits are not what we see in Ferjo's latest works. Rene Magritte, the Belgian surrealist, would be made proud by Ferjo's new art-an exciting, entrancing, mentally and sensually stimulating blend of the everyday with the extraordinary, the plain with the fantastic. Most of Ferjo's paintings take place within an abandoned interior, a "room with a view" out of a large window, made up of puffy, transcendent clouds and nature at the extremes of either sunrise or sunset. Ferjo's work partakes of both the old masters and the 20th century surrealists, Vermeer and deChirico, of the hieroglyphs of the waking eye and the technicolor bounty of the eye asleep, in dreams. He is a master painter with a style he can truly call his own, a style which reassures the heart with its beauty, while astounding the perceptions with constant visual surprise. |