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EDUCATION:
Philadelphia College of Art (University of the Arts)
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting Major
Kean College of New Jersey
Art Education Certificate, Graduate Program
School of Visual Arts, New York
Numerous Graphic Design Courses
Parsons School of Design, New York
Web Site Design Courses
SELECT EXHIBITIONS:
2009 Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, NYC, Group Show
2009 NAWA Members Group Show at Salmagundi, NYC
2009 Artists Against Violence, NYC, Group Show
2009 National Arts Club, NY (exhibiting members exhibition)
2008 NYStudio, New York, NY, Solo Show
2008 Interchuch Center, New York, NY, Solo Show
2008 Zimmerli Collection at Rutgers, NJ, work acquired
2008 Rutgers University, NJ, Group Show
2008 Artists Against Violence, NY, Group Show
2008 The Views at Hudson Pointe,
Pointe Imperial North, NJ, Group Show
2007 Windam Fine Arts, Windam, NY, Group Show
2007 Pen and Brush, New York, NY, Group Show
2007 Kaller Fine Arts, Washington DC, Group Show
2007 Opalka Gallery, Albany, NY, Group Show
2007 NAWA Annual Show, Monroe Center, NJ
2007 Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Texas, Group Show
2007 Liquitex (NJ) Awarded Grand Prize for Excellence in Art
2007 Belskie Museum, Juried NAWA group show
2007 Memphis/Germantown Art League
National Juried Exhibition
2007 Shippensburg University, National Juried Exhibition
2007 NAWA (Nationl Association of WomenArtists)
New Members exhibit
2007 Studio Montclair (NJ) National Juried Exhibition
Third Prize
2007 Gallery 24, Berlin, Germany, group show
2006 American Juried Art Salon, on-line competition
2006 Westwood Gallery, NY (Roundtable exhibition)
2006 National Arts Club, NY (Roundtable exhibition)
2006 National Arts Club, NY (members exhibition)
Nat'l Arts Club Visual Award
2005 Art-Interview Int'l On-line competition, Honorable Mention
2005 American Juried Art Salon, on-line competition (several)
2005 National Arts Club, NY (solo exhibition in Marquis Gallery)
2005 National Arts Club, NY (members exhibition)
2005 National Arts Club, NY (Roundtable exhibition)
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A graphic artist and painter.
Born in Philadelphia, Toni Silber-Delerive graduated from Philadelphia College of Art with a major in painting. Her first gallery show and teaching experience was at the Northern Virginia Art Center. After moving to New Jersey, Toni continued to exhibit and found a home at the Summit Art Center where she taught for several years.
An interest in graphic design developed as she came to realize that it shared many of the same elements as her paintings. Establishing herself as a graphic designer, and the rewarding career that followed working in the creative departments of major New York design studios, led Silber-Delerive to ultimately form her own marketing communications firm, ToniDesign. Today, while she still does work for selected clients, she has switched her main focus to painting.
The colorful and bold aerial landscapes Toni creates show the world from a different perspective and by flattening the picture plane reduce details to strong graphic images. Working through the lens of the camera her paintings capture the moment, and let the image tell a universal story about a place or experience. The strong shadows hint at a certain time of day, at the same time creating the feeling of a familiar but distant landscape.
Silber-Delerive's portrait paintings--some are individuals, some different pairings of couples, two friends or a pair of lovers, and some are family groupings--evoke a soft-focused stylized impression of the period or the persons. Juxtapositions of strong colors combine with graphic but soft-edged shapes to convey a feeling of time and place and individuality.
WILLIAM ZIMMER REVIEW:
Two imaginative bodies of work by Toni Silber-Delerive are concerned with enlivening everyday experience, making us aware of what is often overlooked and see the familiar in a new way.
A cache of photographs — ranging from vintage to ultra-new — is the source for her art. Her figurative work is often based on images of her family that go back generations. She is then inspired by the trademark clothes of an era such as the cloche hats of the 1920 and highlights telling details as in "Embassy club", her most involving figurative painting, where the red fingernails of a woman are riveting because they contrast with the literal drabness of the three men at the table with her. The painting seems bathed in bright light and is a sort of homage to the ambience of nightclubs in mid-century where on-hand photographers would take a quick flash photo of a table grouping and sell it as a souvenir. Silber-Delerive neatly captures the essence of the moment and renders immortal a trivial incident from a bygone era.
The second body of work is literally loftier and remarkable in its scope and ambition. It chronicles the contemporary world and is based on a collection of dispassionate images. The thread running through them is our variegated planet seen from the air. The startling and unexpected is chronicled along with the predictable. Tract housing, a metaphor for predictability, becomes engaging nevertheless because the aerial vantage point flattens perspective and the look-alike houses all become essential contributors to an overall abstract pattern. One of the most daring compositions features the aggressive triangular form of "Airport and Station, Lyons, France." Here is a daring example of contemporary architecture serving as the anchor for a bold abstract painting. A closer-to-home counterpart of the "Airport and Station" is the elaborately complex cloverleaf of "Intersection."
The American scene that has preoccupied artists since the 1920s is a major source for several landscapes. These include "Philadelphia Utility Plant" with its evocatively complex details. Lately paintings have become more challenging and vertiginous with the particulars of a landscape often submerged in brightly colored meandering compositions. The subject is often and appropriately a place of abandon viewed from on high. "Carnival" and "Düsseldorf" are both characterized by circularity and the energy that comes from this. It's like the movement of gear wheels. The fact that "Carnival" is festive and "Düsseldorf" sober and purposeful speaks to the essential unity of her vision that is expressed in the widest range of subjects.
Silber-Delerive astutely cites two diverse, yet related, painters as her major influences: Edward Hopper and Richard Diebenkorn. Hopper is present through his compelling subject matter while Diebenkorn is exemplary for the distinctive hard-edge abstractions based on his corner of the world. The dynamic created by this pairing is vital for Toni Silber-Delerive's compelling, even startling, inventory of the complex world we live in.
William Zimmer is an art critic who has achieved international status through his catalog essays. He recently retired as contributing critic to the New York Times after almost 25 years.
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