James Aponovich, a Nashua native and a UNH alumnus, is a renowned painter whose distinctive style is marked by technical perfection. After graduating from UNH in 1971, his early works of exquisitely rendered large figure paintings set in interiors gained him recognition throughout New Hampshire. He was soon exhibiting his work in galleries in Boston, New York, Beverly Hills, and San Francisco.

After a 1995 trip to Italy, Aponovich began to produce richly colored still-life paintings, filled with a sensual array of objects, textures, light, and atmosphere. He is well known for these compositions, often set against landscapes of the Italian countryside that are reminiscent of paintings of the Renaissance. He paints his objects with a heightened sense of light, texture, and reflection, preferring pristine radiant light to the drama of chiaroscuro. The artist has said he has no interest in iconography or narrative; rather his paintings evoke a question of reality—what seems factual is actually invented. He conceives still-life elements from his mind, a “mental data bank, itself the culmination of years of meticulous observation.”

Self-Portrait with Cyclamen is typical of his early works, in which Aponovich plays down perspective in favor of a flat linear composition in which the space is read through a sequence of planes from front to back. Harmony and balance are achieved through his strong and simple composition and his refusal to overwork the painting. Aponovich’s work has been shown and collected by major museums (including a 2005 retrospective at the Currier Museum of Art), as well as by corporations and private collectors throughout the United States.