Surrender, oil on canvas, 30 x 24"

“I’ve tried to do better about what I bring into my space. My studio is not big but it works, which is why I want to be more in control of what I’m bringing in as far as what can be inspiring to be around and to look at,” he says from his northern Ohio studio, located in Lakewood, a suburb west of Cleveland. Oriti also points out that he’s still getting used to referring to himself as a still life painter. “Until fairly recently I saw myself as a figurative painter, not a still life painter. Over the last eight years, I’ve been painting objects more, mostly because I’m interesting in creating texture and materials, things like denim and leather. They’re like another favorite subject, which is tattooed flesh.” 

85s, oil on canvas covered panel, 16 x 16"

This fluid movement around genres came about several years back, when Oriti took a workshop with painter Bo Bartlett. “I got inspired by Bo’s teaching and his work, and it opened my eyes up to being more than just a portrait painter. It opened up another world to me, coming from portrait painting to painting these little slivers of clothing and texture. There was a shift in my work,” he says, adding that some of his earliest breakout pieces were sneakers. He points to works like 85s, which show a pair of Air Jordans laying on their sides in an interlocking form. “I’m not a huge sneakerhead, but I sort of got really interested in the culture. Sneakers are beautiful and artful objects, but it’s an expensive thing to collect. I was drawn to their colors and textures and how they break down over time. It got me interested in that world.”

Hi Vis, oil on canvas covered panel, 20 x 24"

Oriti will be showing new work in a show titled As Real As It Gets, which opens June 22 at RJD Gallery in Romeo, Michigan. The artist says paintings like 85s and others, will unify his textural interests together under one roof. “They will all go together and there will be a bit of variation to keep things fresh in the studio,” he says.

Against the Grain, oil on canvas, 48 x 42"

In Surrender, Oriti paints a pair of denim pants against a reddish background. “There are images that I paint that belong in the real world, they belong in a space, and then others, more specifically the denim pieces, they become these free-floating abstracted works,” he says. “When I started doing the denim paintings, they were very stark and up against a white background, I wanted them to appear as if they were suspended on the gallery wall. And then, I also think a lot about color relationships, and how they exist in the world. I’ve been using this beautifully destroyed block of concrete for some of the pieces because I love the attention it draws within the paintings.” 

In These Boots, oil on canvas covered panel, 24 x 20"

Some of this fascination with objects goes back to his portrait work. When he would ask people to pose for him, he would not direct them what to wear. This produced some fascinating results. “I would tell them to just be themselves. So many of them started showing up in the same things: jeans, hooded sweatshirts, leather jackets…and their tattoos,” he says. “The work evolved from there. It became more about the look and attitude of the people I was painting.”

Scarpi, oil on canvas covered panel, 16 x 16"

And even though these new pieces don’t have people in them, they still have that look and that attitude because his objects convey character. “Art imitates life and realism transcends it,” says Joi Jackson Perle, RJD’s gallery director. “This style brings the details of an object, a person, or a moment into full focus in a way often missed in real life. Frank Oriti’s exploration of realism lets us examine and appreciate the tangible beauty that surrounds us.”