Artist’s subject is final frontier

By Joe Pinchot
Herald Staff Writer

Painter Joe Tucciarone’s work ethic is as exacting as a scientist undertaking an experiment. Applying acrylic paint with bristle brush and airbrush to stretched canvas or canvas panel, he doesn’t fall back on the shortcuts that other artists employ.

“A lot of space artists, when they do stars, they’ll take a toothbrush, put some white paint on it, and whack the toothbrush so that paint splatters out over the painting,” he said Sunday at a reception for a show of his space paintings at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown. “I won’t do that. I call those accidental stars. I like to put my stars right where I think they belong.”

The Hubbard native painstakingly renders stars — in one work he estimated he painted 72,000 of them — planets, moons and nebulas to show their shapes, relationships in space and the latest facts and theories of astronomy.

But he believes that to focus on the science without using some of the creative freedom of an artist would make for dull paintings.

So he also puts in touches unsupported by science, such as colors that can’t be seen by the naked eye and compositional structures you probably won’t find in space.

The show of Tucciarone’s paintings at the Butler is a homecoming for the Ursuline High School, Youngstown, graduate. His formal art training began in the Butler’s art classes for kids. Growing up, Tucciarone loved space and dinosaurs. He clamored for the paintings of those subjects published in a series of Time-Life books and when permitted free time during the Butler classes, he would paint space and dinosaur scenes.

The interest in art and science became a tug-of-war as he studied physics at Youngstown State University.

“He was always kind of torn between his two great talents, physics and art,” said Dr. Warren Young, professor of astronomy at YSU. “He had one of the best grade point averages in the history of the department.”

Tucciarone got a master’s degree at the University of Toledo, and found an art outlet with his first full-time job, as a planetarium artist in Memphis, Tennessee. He took similar positions in Richmond, Virginia, Bradenton, Fla., and Cocoa, Fla., where he now lives with his wife and two young children.

Tucciarone, 43, considers his paintings of the last six years to be his most important work, and the show focuses on that time. It is augmented with photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope and other astronomical sources so visitors can compare his vision with scientific fact. One of the most dramatic works in the show is “Impact,” a painting commissioned by Astronomy magazine.

“What this represents is the early history of the earth. They believe the earth was hit by another small planet, a grazing collision, so the collision would throw matter out sideways. “This was one of the toughest jobs I ever had. The consulting scientist made sure I got everything right.”

Tucciarone managed to add his own touches while meeting the requirements of the commission. “I put the sun’s rays streaming in through the space, as they might because after all at this point in the early history of the earth there would be dust all through the solar system. The sun’s rays might shine through them as they shine through dust in a dusty room.

“On the back side of the objects there would be disturbances totally opposite of the collision point, and that gave me a chance to play with some more shapes and colors.” The picture gets to the source of his fascination with astronomy.

“I think one of the things that appealed to me as a kid was the weird shapes, the strangeness of space, and the colors.”

Tucciarone, whose work has appeared in National Geographic, World Book Encyclopedia and the movie “Deep Impact,” also has found inspiration in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” photographs from Hubble and the Voyager space probes and the latest astronomy theories.

“Ludek’s Brush” uses the compositional structure from a painting that appeared in National Geographic, and he received permission from the artist to copy it.

“Maybe for that reason it’s one of my favorites, but it also turned out really well,” he said of the painting that shows a comet trailing blue and purple wisps of gas and matter as it passes the earth, as seen from the moon.

Prior to painting “Nightfall Over Titan,” Tucciarone was musing over the space craft that is heading to Saturn to send a probe to one of the planet’s moons. The work is painted from the view of the moon. Saturn rises above the pink clouds of sunset.

“Saturn looks like, in a way, a crescent moon as you might see it after sunset here on the earth. An inspiration for this painting was to do a nice sunset with a nice crescent moon, although it’s obviously the planet Saturn.”

Saturn has figured prominently in Tucciarone’s works back to his Saturday classes in the Butler. One of the paintings the museum is showing is a view of the ringed planet he made at age 10.

“We put that in the exhibit just to show kids that I was like them at one point. Anybody can do what I do. It may not look the same but it will have your own stamp if you stick to it long enough.”

The show runs through April 30.

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