The Olympian Painting

Gerard Paradisi was born and grew up in the small post WWII industrial boom town of Camden New Jersey in the early 1960's. His mother Rose, a fashion illustrator of the 1940's and three older sisters, also artists, taught him to draw in ink, pastels and watercolor by an early age and later in oils. His father Delio a welder at the renowned New York Ship Building Co. in Camden was a big champion of the arts and continually encouraged his artistic family throughout his life. By age 16 and still in highschool he and his childhood friend Arlan, also a young artist, and their two companions and models Susan and Josephine ("Jo") began producing figurative and landscape paintings but now infused with the urban influence of their industrial town and the exploding pop art scene of the early 1960s. Backed by long time friends of the famliy who were also entreupenurial business investors, the two young men's work was displayed in local and New York galleries with great success. Inspired to move forward after highschool Gerard, Arlan, Jo and Susan aquired an abandoned office building in New York City with the profits made in the earlier years and continued producing the avant guard pop and grafitti art of the 60's and 70's. But tragically in 1983, Arlan died of a drug overdose. Gerard continued on with the art factory along with Susan for just a few more years. Jo had married. But Gerard disbanded the enterprise and withdrew from the art scene into solitude for the next 25 years, though he still continued to create and produce a large body of work up to the present day.