Acts and Scenes

The Cincinnati Arts Association and the Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts presents Acts and Scenes: Recent Paintings by John Jacob Stanley, in which the performing arts become subject matter as the artist explores the complexities of theater as a reflection of human activity. 

John Jacob Stanley, who currently resides in Florida, studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and exhibited widely in the city during the last two decades. The works in this exhibition are watercolor paintings and egg tempera paintings that give the viewer a glimpse into both the world of theater and the imagination of the artist, as he creates provocative scenes of dancers, musicians, and clowns that are both intimate in detail and broad in their cultural context. As a young man, Stanley painted backdrops and scenery for school productions and found himself fifty years later painting Curtain Up, the first in a series of works that uses theater, its moods, dynamics, and stock characters, as a metaphor for real life. Entertainers is alive with theatrical types and references to melodrama, while Final Curtain connects the end of the play to the end of life, with an ominous creature lurking in the wings. 

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