Dennis J. Rano is dedicated to, if not fixated on, painting all manner of pictures.
He’s so dedicated, in fact, that he abandoned the family’s real estate business in Westerville to strike out on his own in New York City in 1993, armed only with deep desire and four years of study at the Columbus College of Art and Design.
Before he graduated from Westerville South High School, he attended Saturday morning art classes at CCAD and earned a full, four-year scholarship. His last year, he walked out on a full ride and went into the family’s real estate business, where he designed brochures and helped market several condominium projects for Romanelli & Hughes.
But art remained his passion.
“I always wanted to be a New York artist,” Rano says, and he told himself, “If I don’t do it now, I never will.”
So he quit. “It was the happiest day of my life, or one of them,” he says.
In New York, he eventually became affiliated with the Salmagundi Art Club, a prestigious organization with many well-known artists among its members, past and present. It was there that Rano discovered his niche: the palette knife.
His medium of choice is acrylics because it dries quickly, mistakes can be easily corrected and changes easily made, and, he adds, “it doesn’t smell.” With the knife and acrylics, he can create deeply textured paintings that enjoy a healthy level of popularity.
By living in the city, and through his shows at the club, he gained upscale clients for commissioned works, many for manses. But finally, in 2009, he decided it was time to come home.
So he set up a studio in Uptown Westerville and stayed there 18 months before moving to a new space: a huge, long-empty manufacturing building on East Broadway Avenue. He leased two rooms; a personal fitness club now occupies some adjoining space.
Rano usually arrives between 4 and 6 a.m. daily because it’s a quiet time.
“It’s just me and the squirrels,” he says.
He feeds those friendly animals peanuts and sunflower seeds daily on a studio window ledge. He claims his “friends” knock for food, too.
Typically, Rano works intently for two or three hours, takes a break and then returns to the easel. He may be in the studio until midnight or beyond, especially when working on one of his large commissioned works.
Rano discusses an impressive array of commissioned work he has done over the years in New York and central Ohio. He works from photographs. His picture subjects include a young couple photographed decades ago, sailboats on Hoover Reservoir, realistic paintings of historic buildings in Europe and landscapes.
In his typically cluttered studio one day in September, there was a just-completed portrait of the cathedral-like interior of a Methodist church in Cincinnati where a Westerville-area couple was married, commissioned as a keepsake.
Rano describes how he used a long T-square to paint precise lines and angles. To make pictures personal – and he wants all his commissioned works to be personal – he added the couple’s initials to cloths on pew backs. For another commissioned picture of a lake and sailboats, he tells of using the buyer’s family birth dates as registration numbers on the sails.
He likes to do paintings for new homes or at least vacant walls, he says.
“I like to go out and measure and get their ideas of what (owners or designers) want,” Rano says, so he can make the work unique and personal for the owners.
On his large studio table is a photograph of a massive, new estate home near Johnstown and an interior photograph of pictures he painted to fit the décor and ambiance. And there’s a big Christmas ornament with the home exterior he painted on it, which he plans to give the clients. He often paints ornaments with such subjects as family pets or horses, but says he intends to do fewer. They sell for $200 to $250. Commissioned work prices range from $3,000 to $10,000, which he says are at least comparable to the market.
The studio, foyer and hallways are his gallery. There are portraits of the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger; a Hudson River-Brooklyn Bridge-Twin Towers scene; a large abstract; a small drawing of German Village homes; and an Italian church scene featuring a foreground of bright red poppies, prime examples of how he makes acrylics look like oil. Nearby are three large frames of crumpled cellophane, each a different color of acrylic.
From a stack of pictures against the wall in a storeroom, he pulls an outsized iconic portrait of Jack Nicklaus in his swing follow-through. On a wall is an interpretive piece about President Obama that depicts various developments during his tenure. The outside of the frame has 38 small cars attached with a small Superman figurine – Rano searched and found one in original colors – on the top because “everyone thought he was going to be Superman.”
Rano has displayed his work in such central Ohio restaurants as the Refectory and Barcelona. In Westerville, his works have been displayed at Bel Lago and Crimson & Clover Hair Salon.
He gained some renown in his
hometown last year with a painting of Uptown, commissioned by Westerville law firm Metz, Bailey & McLoughlin, which employs city law director Bruce Bailey. It was a gift to the city to support its Art in Public Spaces program. The painting was titled America’s Friendliest City, and prints are sold at the Westerville Community Center to pay for a Prohibition-themed statue to be placed at City Hall.
The painting is impressionist. To add to its realism, Rano painted his parents, Dick and Donna, as pedestrians at State and Main streets. Dick was the city’s first parks and recreation director. It was made even more realistic because, at Bailey’s urging, Rano added various City Council members and others as pedestrians. One of the few cars was Bailey’s.
Though Rano left it ages ago, the family business is still running in Westerville. Four of his siblings are still in the real estate business here.
At 55, dedicated and driven, Rano isn’t always sure, from one day to the next, what style he might paint.
“I’m doing exactly what I love,” he says.
Duane St. Clair is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at tdufresne@cityscenemediagroup.com.
