In his current collection of new oils and mixed media drawings on display at the First Street Gallery, 526 West 26th Street, Chelsea, Bill Creevy has chosen to remodel Rome and Italy into a world of his own imagination – ‘ITALIA’.

In ‘ITALIA’ Creevy steps back from reality and abandons the present world only to give way to the past. Creevy is definitely not painting the Italy of today. There are no urbane, sophisticated, fashionable Italians enjoying their Risotto coi funghi in Trattorias or speeding through winding alleyways on Vespa motorbikes. In fact there are no Italians to be seen at all. Creevy’s Italy is uninhabited. It's as if the Romans have left town, rolled up their paved streets, and invited the dust and grime of earlier periods to reemerge and finally overtake the vestiges of the last two centuries. All is red brick and grey stone. All is light and shadow; form and decay. Everything is off center with age – disintegrating. As Bob Dylan once wrote, "Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble, ancient footprints are everywhere."

But it is in the ruin and grandeur of Creevy’s personal sack of Rome that the perfect topsoil is provided for the full expression of his painting technique: loose; open; expressive – clearly a style of painting in which the marks and gestures of a human hand are visible. Creevy’s aim was to always have a painting language that emulated the atmosphere and spontaneity of drawing: a painting language that somehow vibrated in and out of reality but nevertheless always suggested the presence and weight of complete form. It’s much like the playwright Andrew J. Genco once wrote: “There is the mess of pen and pencil, but inside is the newly born image, accessible for but a moment.”

Bill Creevy, ‘ITALIA’ will be on display from January 4 through January 27, 2007. There will be an opening reception Thursday, January 4 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.