In October, in our front gallery, SHFAP presents recent paintings by E.M. Saniga. Based in Lancaster County PA, Saniga is a scientist–a distinguished professor of IT at the University of Delaware–as well as a painter of stark engaging images of his environs in Lancaster County.

His still life paintings possess a nocturnal luminosity. Paintings with figures are both surprising and compelling. Saniga’s light is often tamped down to assume an almost crepuscular glow. He works in a stone studio building with minimal illumination. A painting of peonies under the moon exudes a perfume-like atmosphere. A bullfrog and a box turtle, a plate of morels, a naked woman and a horse in a dark wood are among the little mysteries that Saniga presents.

Roberta Smith has written in the NY Times that Saniga continues to “erase the line between progressive and traditional.” Saniga is the recently retired Dana Johnson Professor of Information Technology at the University of Delaware. He was guest of honor at The Jerusalem Studio School residency program in Civita, Italy in 2012 and had a one person show at Rothschild Fine Art in Tel Aviv in 2018.

Though he paints from life, he says: “I use everything available in making paintings. I generally start at least parts of a painting from life and then I edit using memory, photographs, or whatever else seems to help.” Saniga studied with Seymour Remenick at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and privately under Bruce Kurland. He endows a residency program called the Charles and Lois Carlson Landscape Painting Prize, which is awarded to a Pennsylvania Academy student. This is his fourth exhibition at SHFAP.