As published in the Norwalk Citizen-News/19 September, 2003.

A Man at Home in Two Different Worlds

You follow Rob Marsico down a flight of stairs and when he turns on the recessed lights you are suddenly surrounded by sober souls garbed in female forms: women – some vulnerable, others aloof, still others withdrawn into their own private worlds – who have been captured in paintings that at first demand more of the viewer than he or she is willing to give.

Marsico, whose looks, build and gravelly voice might lead people to mistake him for an ex-football player or a character actor on “The Sopranos,” calls the 50 or 60 paintings in this series his “isolated women”, although he is quick to correct any misconception about what “isolated” might mean.

“They’re concentrated,” he explained in a recent interview. “I don’t think I was driving at alienation as much as for unique personalities.”

Perhaps no one is more qualified to attempt to capture “unique personalities” than Marsico, who by day is the director of business development for a financial applications firm.

“I live two lives,” the West Norwalk resident said. “My professional life is a cutting-edge hi-tech existence.” And then there is his artistic life, which has taken him from cutting rough stone into sculptures to painting the “portraits” on display on the walls of his gallery.

The journey began after Marsico, now in his 50s, graduated from Western Connecticut State University with a degree in psychology and went to work as a commercial sculptor for a design company that manufactured fiberglass ship figureheads, harpoons and other items used in decorating restaurants. It was also at this time that he began carving faces and birds out of marble for his own enjoyment.

“I was in my early 20s,” Marsico said, “and it was very natural for me. I had two grandfathers who were stonecutters, so I guess there was genetically transmitted material there.”

The initial response to his sculptures was positive, Marsico said, but he soon became disenchanted with the art scene. “I won some exhibitions and some shows, but I had some less-than-positive experiences in the show scene – they were political and at the time I was young and found that difficult to accept. I was a bit more idealistic then, I suppose.”

Although the “show politics” didn’t stop him from sculpting, he soon was faced with a problem that confronts many artists both young and old. “I was always poor” he said. Unwilling to play the role of starving artist, Marsico took some advice from people more experienced than he.

“It was about that time that I read Nietzsche,” Marsico said, referring to the 19th century German philosopher. “Nietzsche wrote that all artists should learn a trade so as to be free.” Marsico also heeded the words of Henri Matisse, the French Fauvist painter. “Matisse said late in his career that if he had it to do over again he would have taken a job with a salary so he could work independently”.

Marsico weighed his options and the heft of his wallet and decided to become a real estate broker. He got his real estate license and went into investment and commercial real estate in New York. It was while he and an associate were changing the method of ownership of apartments by converting them into co-ops that an epiphany of sorts occurred.

“I had to take some compliance documents down to the World Trade Center,” Marsico said, “and I finished relatively early, and I decided to stop at the Metropolitan Museum.” He followed his inclination and soon found himself in the section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to European painters.

“I was smitten by a Van Gogh,” Marsico explained, “It was a painting of a blooming orchard and the acid sky and the bite in the wind – it was like I was directly receiving his impressions of the garden. Like I was there. It was remarkable.” At that moment Marsico decided he was going to draw. “So I bought a box of pastels and a pad of paper,” he said, “and I decided that I was going to do a pastel on each one of the pages and see how it goes. Well very shortly thereafter they were all over the house and I was buying an easel and paints.”

By then in his mid-30s, the self-taught artist had launched himself into an entirely new world. Working now in oils, he began painting in earnest and decided to devote his time exclusively to his art.

“I sold some paintings and my wife worked at that point – she’s very supportive – and real estate had been good,” Marsico said. “So I did that until the early ‘90s.when there was a recession, and the first thing that happens is that people don’t necessarily need that piece of art the way they did in different financial times.”

Again needing to be gainfully employed, Marsico was approached by a friend who asked him if he wanted to work as a contract specialist negotiating agreements of sale with large corporations. “I took that job, and that is how I started out in hi-tech,” Marsico said. His time now is divided between working at his Westport office, where he is involved with business intelligence and performance planning software, and painting in his studio in Shelton.

“I actually did paint in my home in the late ‘80s,” Marsico said, “when I was painting full time. But it is invaluable to have a dedicated space where you can do a complete intellectual and emotional shift – do your creative piece, close the door behind you. It’s a place where art is made.”

His home, however, is a place where art is both stored and displayed. All of the rooms in the comfortable ranch bear witness to various “periods” through which Marsico has passed in his evolution as an artist.

“There was the religious series, the dance series,” Marsico recalls, “The mosaic pieces where the ground is cut and then the painting is put over it, a circus series and then a series of pastel paintings of women that that led into the current series.”

It was various galleries’ negative responses to his religious series that made Marsico decide not to formally “show” his work. He turned away from actively seeking remuneration for his work and focused entirely on the act of painting.

“My interest is in the making, the process of working in paint,” he said.

Passionate about the creative process, he has had the opportunity to share his enthusiasms with others as a mentor.

“I have had wonderful experiences with people who were on the cusp, had creative capabilities but didn’t quite know how to begin,” Marsico said. “In two instances I spent a couple of hours with them and gave them some suggestions and they’ve gone on to do wonderful things. Those are really beautiful experiences to have.”

Marsico is extremely comfortable living in both the hi-tech and art worlds since his dualistic philosophy easily embraces what some would see as a dichotomy: the necessity to earn a living and an almost all-encompassing urge to create.

“We all live in two worlds,” he said. “Essentially we all live in a material world and a spiritual world by virtue of our humanity. We have this mind/spiritual piece, and we also have the necessity to provide for ourselves materially.”

Perhaps it is his willingness to embrace the duality of things that has enabled him to create the women in his current series of paintings – women who seem both corporal and ethereal with faces familiar yet not entirely of this world.

Working from memory, pictures in ads or flyers, or photographs he has taken on his many trips to Montreal, Canada – almost all of his circus paintings were based on circus performers he met and photographed in Montreal – he fashions images of women stripped to their essence, sometimes to the point of vanishing.

“That’s my own sense of a process of ‘dematerialization’,” Marsico said. “If you’re living in time, you spend some of yourself and then there’s less of you left”.

As with his other series, the “isolated women” came about in an unplanned manner After the circus series he switched gears and began working on a series of pastel portraits of women.

“It was the pendulum swinging away from the hot circus colors to these soft impressions,” Marsico said. “Then one day I just made this piece,” he said pointing at a portrait of a somber, introspective woman set against a neutral background. “I liked the way the image played off blank background so I began to do these and that’s where we are today.”

Marsico is not sure how long he will be painting his “isolated women” and seems unconcerned about what will follow. Perhaps this is due to his down-to-earth approach to the making of art.

“I have always wanted to demystify life,” he said. “If you want to make sculptures, make sculptures: if you want to paint, then paint. When I paint, I paint. It’s just working and working brings all of the answers.”