Joseph (JR) Rotondo was a prominent New England artist with an inspiring passion for painting. He spent his entire life honing his craft.
Born in 1929 in Providence, Rhode Island, he studied privately for ten years under Rhode Island artist Herman Itchkawich, best known for his many years on the faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, serving from the 1930s through the 1960s, teaching many painters still active today, including Marge Pustell and Paul Goodnow.
Rotondo continued to further hone his skills as an artist during four years studying under Rhode Island Impressionist icon Antonio Cirino. Cirino’s influence is felt in many of Rotondo’s works. Always the student of nature, Rotondo painted En Plein Air for most of his career, often experimenting in abstracts and portraits.
Rotondo’s fluid technique displays a keen understanding of composition and skillful craftsmanship in manipulation of pigment, particularly in the fluttering and lively effects he so effortlessly depicts of light reflecting off water. He became a Master Painter of En Plein-Air Impressionism and spent his entire life perfecting these effects and interpretations of his subjects until his passing in 2013 at the age of 83.