Biography and Artist Statement by Francesco Bonifazi - Stella Scarano Bonifazi's eldest son
My name is Francesco Bonifazi, and my mother was a well-known and respected artist whose professional and maiden name was Stella Scarano. Mom was intimately involved with the art scene in Central New York and beyond. She painted almost continuously up until she suffered multiple strokes, which left her physically unable to paint, but it never stopped her from looking at everything she saw as a subject for a future project. For Mom, art and life were inseparable. Stella started her art journey attending the Traphagen School in NYC. Traphagen was later incorporated into the nearby Fashion Institution of Technology (FIT) in 1991. After earning her degree there, she returned to Utica and began working as the art director for the J. B. Wells Department Store in Downtown Utica. This was in the late 1940s. She was responsible for all the ads placed in local media.
Most only know Stella as a modern, abstract artist, but I've seen several of her early ads and they were highly realistic and detailed drawings, which were the norm for ads in newspapers at the time as they were just black and white publications. I also remember her painting portraits in our living room with the subject under bright flood lights my Dad had set up. We had to be quiet those evenings. My Dad, Truman was Stella's right-hand man, and did everything from stretching new canvases, prepping them with "Gesso", and framing the final artwork, and shipping them off to exhibits nationwide and internationally. He was always under assignments from my Mom, but somehow found time for his own painting and photography passions. I remember her telling me "An artist needs to start with realistic art, and only relax their focus on likeness and venture into abstract art, after developing their basic skills. Otherwise, they aren't in control of their art."
Her periods of painting and construction weren't linear, meaning they weren't concise periods, but rather there were transitions between one to the next over time, and even revisits of aspects of previous periods, as she experimented with new subjects and techniques.
