Bill Lowe Gallery celebrates summer with a two-person exhibition by Fabio Modica and Claire Begheyn. Both artists revel in nature’s impact on our creative spirit through a rich process of layering, wedding luminous surface and sensual undulation to prod our memory and imagination. The viewer will feel an undeniably effervescent rush from the highly saturated and deeply impastoed visages portrayed by Fabio Modia. Claire Begheyn’s baroque wall sculptures, composed of ornate seashells densely layered in elaborate period frames, call to mind the splendor of the organic universe.

Fabio Modica is an Italian painter whose first love was Renaissance representational styles. But after a mentorship with expressionist painter, Antonio Santacroce, and a journey through Mexico, he developed his signature portraits. His work is characterized by a piercing, enigmatic quality achieved by a spur-of-the-moment technique that employs thickly textured paint applied with a palette knife. Modica’s paintings act as a portal through which the mesmerizing visages of entities so dreamlike they seem as deities gazing up upon us with a seductive and compelling spontaneity.

Claire Begheyn embraces the organic in every way. From her materials to the very forms achieved, nature governs her process. Begheyn recalls the shared experience of wonder at collecting seashells as children. She slips into a deep creative trance as she crafts compositions that echo the splendor of the antique frames she uses as the beds for her assemblages. She allows the beauty created by the incredibly vulnerable creatures that thrived within the shells to guide the progression of each piece. Her sculptures are balanced but not perfectly symmetrical, echoing nature’s display- harmonious, but not preordained in any way. Begheyn pairs this natural beauty with the ornate opulence of rococo styled wooden features that emulate nature with stylized leaves and organic shapes. The word “rococo” is, in fact, a blending of the Italian word for stone and the French word for shell. Begheyn does not shy away from the idea that her pieces are ornamental and decorative but trusts in the virtue of the shell itself evoking deeper notions of home, protection, beauty, and elegance.