ART REVIEW:

A trio of artists with vastly differing and fascinating styles is showing its work at the Creative Arts Center Gallery in Burbank. This month’s exhibition features the work of Pete Graziano, a classic painter; Ron Kriss, a digital illustrator; and Antonio Pelayo, a sketch artist.

Raised in Burbank, Graziano is an established painter and illustrator who has spent years working as a computer effects artist and designer in the film and broadcast business.

Having graduated from Los Angeles Art Center with honors, Graziano went on to work at NBC and then Fox as an art director. Yet, his return to painting came as no surprise because this was his first passion when entering art school.

“I love figurative, illustrative and colorful art,” he said. “It is what I wanted to go back and produce.”

Produce he has.

Influenced by the great impressionists and with a direction toward intelligent draftsmanship and appreciation for acrylic, Graziano creates an abundance of enchanting scenes that breathe and speak.

This is made entirely evident in his piece titled “Chalk Drawing.”

The portrait of three young girls drawing on a sidewalk is a crisp reminder of innocent times — with a razor precision to detail and the mood of the moment.

Other works in his arsenal of creating a universal story include “Santa Barbara Escape.”

The train station portrait is a bustle of movement with short brush stokes that creates a fluidity that stays controlled in the narrative.

There is a joy to Graziano’s work, an upbeat mode of communication that includes the viewer, and perhaps their own memories of idyllic moments.

Adding technology to the fold is that of Kriss.

Born in Glendale, Kriss attended Art Center for Design and went on to earn a master’s degree from Cal State Los Angeles.

He began his career in the commercial art business, designing album covers for some very notables including the cover of the Jackson Five “Dancing Machine” album.

He soon moved on to film posters, being commissioned to create one sheets for Academy Award-winning films. While his commercial career continued, so did his love of digital art transfers to canvas, with a special interest in the subject of koi fish. His inspiration came from his own pond.

“They are so docile and beautiful,” he said. “You actually get to know them over time.”

His two standouts in the show are that of his “Nashka Koi,” which is both brilliant and alive, as is his “Butterfly Koi.” The images are intensely colorful, beyond bold with electrifying shades of purples, greens and blues, and creating an almost 3-D, floating illusion of the subjects.

His other works in the show exhibit extensive use of Geisha women, who are stunningly portrayed in a vivid realism. Kriss is a gifted technician with a clear appreciation if not infatuation with Asian culture and the beauty it holds.

Last but certainly not least is Pelayo.

Born in Glendale and raised in Mexico, Pelayo has documented in his work on paper a keen sense of isolation from leaving his suburb at an early age and settling with his family in a small Mexican village.

Seeking out other artists as he got older for moral support and mentoring, Pelayo soon became friends with greats including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Orozco, who revealed to him a depth of Mexican art and its movement and political significance.

Returning to Glendale, Pelayo began to polish his skills as an artist.

“I’ve tried landscapes and fantasy scenes,” he has said, “but it’s the portrait that fascinates me.”

Pelayo’s graphite and prisma pencil on paper are breathtaking and stark.

His portrait “Kahlo,” capturing Frida Kahlo better than she herself might have in countless self-portraits, is a dreamy, softer version of the artist who has otherwise been seen as hard.

His other drawings, all just as moody and fascinating with an almost incomparable detail in the pencil, are mostly made up of family photos.

And it’s not the subjects themselves that become so riveting.

Pelayo intentionally leaves out the background from his portraits, leaving the viewer to concentrate solely on those subjects.

This holds powerfully true in his piece “La Varda,” where six smiling children are sitting on what can only be guessed is a bench. One has no idea what the children are smiling at, nothing is staged.

Yet even with its isolation, there is an intimacy to the pleasure of the moment that we each want to know what generates such a time.

“That intimacy between the subject and the artist, the vulnerability that the subject must have to my interpretation — that is trust at its most divine,“ he has said.

Lucky for us.