SEASONS • The Paintings of Dennis R. Adomaitis

When artist Dennis Adomaitis passed away earlier this year, while he definitely left a void within the fabric of our community for the many people, students, friends and colleagues whose lives he touched with his talented hand and inclusive and gregarious nature; he also fortunately filled that void with an impressive legacy of original artwork that reflects the multitude of deep texture and boldly brash, richly colored beauty that he captured with his unique and discerning artistic eye.

Thanks to innovative breakthroughs with the process known as Giclee printing, now a collection featuring over 30 pieces of his original artwork will be on display and available for purchase by the public and were recently featured at a special exhibition entitled Seasons: The Paintings of Dennis R. Adomaitis, at the Andersen Enrichment Center; and are also now available at Adomaitis Antiques shop on Court Street in Old Town Saginaw. 

For Melodye Adomaitis, this project represents not only an opportunity to share the broad range of Dennis’ work, but also to keep the spirit of colorful and singular creativity that Dennis possessed the gift to capture alive and circulating. 

“One of Dennis’ former art students came to the funeral and suggested I have giclee duplicates of his work made in order for people to purchase and enjoy it, only I wasn’t that thrilled with the process, because he had tried it a couple years ago and ended up putting varnish over them,” explains Melodye. “But this student told me that the process improved immensely over the past couple of years, so I thought it best to do some further investigating and discovered that photographer Avram Golden had developed a giclee process that was incredibly accurate and deserving of pursuit.”

‘Giclee’ is a process whereby a high-quality photograph of an oil painting is taken and digitally adjusted with a computer before the image is printed upon a canvas for lifelike reproduction.  The image is refined color-wise from the photograph and printed on huge rolls of canvas, as opposed to paper.

Melodye says she assembled a small committee of close friends that helped her go through the hundreds of paintings that Dennis created over his lifetime and narrowed it down to about 30 pieces of work, which will be shown at the exhibition and also available for purchase at Adomaitis Antiques.

“Dennis enjoyed doing a lot of portraits for people,” reflects Melodye, “but he also painted everything from dogs to flowers, snow scenes, street scenes, springtime scenes, and much with nature; and I think he was equally strong with whatever subject he would create. His range was pretty diverse and when he was teaching, at the end of every school year, he would give each of his students a drawing of themselves before they left.  But for this exhibition, because portraits are so personal, we mainly concentrated on featuring his more nature-oriented artwork.”

Prices will range anywhere from $85 to $400, depending upon the size of canvas; and the paintings can also be sized to whatever specifics one desires.  “What’s great about this is that people can actually own a beautiful canvas of Dennis’ work that is nearly indistinguishable from the original at much less that what he would normally sell his original paintings.”

Melodye adds that the paintings featured span different periods and years of his career. “There is one that he created back in his college days around 1967 that is quite abstract and a real departure for Dennis; and then he could also do something like a little dog sitting upon a chair, framed by a wide, broad, spaciously and detailed background of nature,” she reflects. “I believe people will be pleased with the range of work we were able to cultivate.”

To find out more about obtaining giclee renderings of Dennis Adomaitis’ work you can phone Melodye at Adomaitis Antiques at 989-790-7469.