"Classic Creole Yams" Print

Vincent Scilla’s imagined baseball players immediately transport the viewer into a fantasy world. He starts his paintings by assembling various images sourced from classic photographs of ballplayers and found vintage advertising, which are combined together to make a constructed scene—injected with a fanciful sense of memory and the passing of time. The settings and figures are both familiar and not, with references to classical paintings, hints of humor, wordplay, and mythical American heroes, placed in a landscape tradition both recognizable and imaginary. A graduate of the University of Michigan’s art school, Mr. Scilla’s work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally and is in the collection of various private individuals, as well as the Butler Institute of American Art, The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and the United States Golf Association (USGA) Gallery. Many of his works have also been acquired by such sports figures as Gary Player, the Boston Red Sox, and the Atlanta Braves ball clubs, and art collectors like Alan Flusser. He is also a recipient of a Pollack Krasner Foundation grant.