Velardi’s small gouache paintings are remarkable for their easy combination of geometry and organism, their aristocratic formal control and restrained, mysterious color.

We look through a circle or two placed symmetrically on a pinstriped format––as through a microscope––into a world of phosphorescent beings. As handsome as these pictures are they are less decorative than evocative of odd lunar landscapes. They are objects for bemused contemplation.

Velardi’s world is reminiscent of Yves Tanguey’s but more intimate because of its focus and more detached because of the geometric wall that places us as spectators to the ambiguous, magical action.

––William Wilson

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