Many are familiar with Taneytown resident Joe Vigliotti for his politics, as he has served as a city councilman since 2013 and he writes an Opinion page column for the Carroll County Times. What most people don’t know is that he is an incredible artist and photographer, as well.
Vigliotti’s interest in art can be traced back to his mother when he was a child.
“My mom is the most amazing artist I know,” Vigliotti said. “She does everything from traditional painting to digital design. She is very versatile. As a kid, I would see her create these pieces of art that were beautiful. It was inspiring. And I wanted to do the same thing.
“She taught me to look at beauty in the world and to look at things more closely, to see them beyond what they are,” Vigilotti continued. “You are not just looking at a landscape. You are looking at form, shape, light and shadow. You’re looking at the way the sunlight falls across the land. You’re not just looking at people, but at a human soul.”
As Vigliotti got older, he tried to copy his mother’s artwork. Even now, he says his mother is such a good artist, he is still trying to play catch-up. While Vigliotti had art instruction from his mother and encouragement from his father, Ray, he never had any professional art instruction beyond high school.
When he was a freshman, Vigliotti began to paint more with watercolors. He had a teacher, John James, who encouraged him specifically to continue on with watercolors. Vigliotti’s initial paintings focused on historical scenes such as the fall of the Alamo, George Washington at Valley Forge, and the culmination of Pickett’s Charge.
After graduation from high school, Vigliotti attended Mount Saint Mary’s University. During this time, Vigilotti began to take an interest in the places themselves where these kinds of historical events he was painting took place. He became more interested in the land and in nature.
“It is a striking contrast that these momentous historic events could take place in someone’s farm field, an old adobe mission, or a river,” Vigliotti said. “Human presence can be both incidental and transformative to a place. But without our presence, who is to say you’re seeing the gentle slope of a hill in 1776 or 2020? Only God knows that.”
Ultimately, the figures in his paintings were suffused by the world in which they lived. Vigliotti started painting watercolor landscapes, influenced by the beauty of nature and his mother’s artwork.
“I love watercolors because they are challenging,” Vigliotti said, “You have to have an idea about how the medium works in order to do something with it. You can’t always just cover over a mistake or a decision the watercolors make on their own. But that’s part of the love of creation. Between creating something and understanding how to create it, you’re forming something as it’s coming into being. It requires a tremendous amount of you.
"It is like transcribing your heart into the medium. It is taking what you are and putting it into your work. You’ve seen something beautiful and you want to capture it. I’ll be out with my dog, Frankie, and anything can become the foundation for a painting.”
Vigliotti has been doing watercolor for about 19 years.
“The way I do it is simple. I sketch a couple lines where things are generally going to be, and then I paint,” he explained. “The watercolors make sense of everything.”
Vigliotti is also a photographer. Recently, he photographed a series of night scenes in Taneytown with emphasis on “the way light echoes and reflects against things at night — trees, roads, houses, cars, the water in gutters."
"Last winter I walked around town in the dark. I took photographs of light at night. There is something beautiful about it because you see things in a different way than you do during the day, almost as if time has slowed and stopped,” he said.
By day, Vigilotti works as a professional writer. But he is also accomplished in creative writing as well. To date, he has published 16 books, including two collections of short stories. One of his recent is “A Time Returned in Faith.” The short novel takes place against the outbreak of World War II, when a revenant being is sent to Earth from Heaven with the task of securing one specific soul — one belonging to a young woman, whom he falls in love with, instead. It touches on themes of love, beauty, time and war.
Vigilotti is also a conservative columnist for the Times. While he writes primarily on politics and current events, he also delves into faith and religion, philosophy, history, and more. One of his favorite pieces he has written was on how time and history change things, but which “makes it so important to hold on to truth, to values, and to the things that we love.” It was a column inspired by a flight of ducks.
Some of Vigliotti’s watercolor landscapes and night photographs are currently on display at Georges on York Bed and Breakfast (georgesonyork.com) in Taneytown, offering guests comfortable elegance while evoking the past in this historic remodeled post-Civil War home. Gallery TEN is the Inn’s latest offering, featuring local artists — both emerging and established — in the home’s formal living room. It is unique because it offers the viewer a chance to see art in a living space environment. The room was designed purposely as a gallery, including layout and lighting.
Vigliotti’s show included his landscape watercolors, a piece of surrealism and his series of lighted nighttime scenes. Taneytown wood craftsman, Doug Heck, is also having a show at the same time as Vigliotti. The show will run through Feb. 29, 2020.
Vigliotti can be contacted at javigliotti@gmail.com. His website is jvigliotti.com.