As a child living in central Illinois, Bruce Cascia was given a Brownie camera by his father. The simple cameras were barely more than a box with a lens and a shutter release. They held film—“Two-and-quarter by two-and-a-quarter,” Cascia recalls—but there was little room for bells and whistles. 
Big Sky Thunder II, oil on canvas, 42 x 32"
“I would use it to shoot all around the old farmhouses. So many of them were abandoned and it always was intriguing to me,” the Chicago-based artist says. “The people who lived in them had reached a point to where they had to move, or were forced out, and they just left them. They were time capsules and no matter how much my parents admonished me I would sneak inside to get a sense of the people who had lived there.”
Those childhood memories of exploration, and of just witnessing the remnants of human life on those vast farms, are the inspiration for Cascia’s newest batch of paintings that will be presented at a showbeginning September 1 at Giacobbe-Fritz Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 
Night Thunder, oil on canvas, 30 x 40"
“I remember going inside a house and seeing wallpaper sort of peeling off the wall and thinking someone put that wallpaper up by hand so many years ago, and today that’s all that’s left,” he adds. “I just really want to convey the drama of the land and sky, but also inspire wonder and awe as people look at these farmhouses and imagine who may have once lived there.”
Many of the works show the endless sky over the land. “I love that expanse of sky, especially when there are no mountains around and you really feel how miniscule these farmhouses are out in the distance,” Cascia says. “When those big thunderheads roll in, the houses look like insignificant matchboxes. That’s what motivated me to paint them—I wanted to capture the feeling of the immense sky.”
Flatland Sundown, oil on canvas, 30 x 40"
New paintings include Big Sky Thunder II and Night Thunder, both of which show clouds building up and out over the horizon. Other works feel more intimate in comparison, including Flatland Sundown and Night Sky Clearing, both of which are more tethered to the earth and the farmhouse.
“Giacobbe-Fritz Fine Art is proud to feature new works by prominent artist Bruce Cascia this coming September. Looking beyond the box stores and suburbs that dominate the American landscape, the artist explores and documents scenes that evoke both nostalgia and loss,” says Stephanie Morimoto with the gallery. “From mom-and-pop hotdog stands to the extraordinary highway vistas of the West, Cascia captures all in his detailed and vibrant photorealist oil paintings.” —
Giacobbe-Fritz Fine Art
702 Canyon Road • Santa Fe, NM 87501
(505) 986-1156 • www.giacobbefritz.com
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