Yellow Fine Arts Highlighting Local Talent

SHANDAKEN — This winter of 2025 has dampened the momentum of the thriving arts economy in the northern Catskills, but the blustery, ice laden roads, squall bursts and consistently frigid temperatures did not interrupt the local online art gallery of Yellow Fine Arts (YFA) owned and operated by artist Jerry Gallo. YFA online gallery was started by Gallo in 2014 from his home in Shandaken. It continues to provide exposure for artists from the Hudson Valley and Delaware County areas of upstate New York. Gallo reflects on when he started as an online art curator, “I couldn’t afford a brick-and-mortar gallery. This was a great opportunity to network with other artists and help provide them with more exposure to audiences.” The online curation of art from Saatchi Art and Artsy are a comprehensive platform for folks seeking art. YFA online gallery rarely features artists from outside of New York.

This winter, 1053 Main Street Gallery in Fleischmanns, Hawk and Hive Gallery in Andes, and Art Up in Margaretville, closed for the colder of the winter months. With uncertain economic times ahead, Delaware, Green, and Ulster Counties may choose to explore the option that Gallo has paved for artists.

The motivation of art buyers parallels the emotion that inspire artists to create their works. In a recent post by Heaven McArthur, Hawk + Hive gallery house photographer, she describes what it has meant to her to be able to express herself on Instagram. “This is my guiding beacon right now. Once upon a stone, this platform was my beginning voice, what moved me, my struggles, my insights, the magic. It was often scary but always an opening of rich human to human connections” This past summer Gallo had an exhibition at Art Up which opened the door to Gallo meeting photographer Aldo Gonzalez at several Delaware County art events. Their paths crossing led to Gallo asking Gonzalez to show his photographs on the Yellow Fine Arts website and on the YFA gallery Instagram page. 

Gonzalez is a long-term resident of Roxbury and a graduate of the School of Visual Arts. After an extensive career in the US Air Force and now working with a private contractor, this past summer Gonzalez began showing his amazing collection of photographs for the first time. Gonzalez says in the past he was ‘always the plus-one’ to his wife concerning cultural and community engagement. That has changed since last summer when he showed his photos at an exhibition at the Andes Academy of Art, and at the AMR Galli-Curci exhibition.  Street photography is Gonzalez’s passion, like the work of Vivian Maier with subjects of great character and deliberate expression. Traveling throughout the world including Japan, which happens to be a subject of his recent works, Gonzalez captures both cultural esthetics, and the human-to-human engagements not typically seen in most street photography. There’s a signature photo featured on the yellowfinearts.com website of a crowd of Japanese students spanning the edges of the photo with a young man, hands on hips, leering intensely as a young lady is pointing towards the camera. Gonzalez is grateful for his experience at the School of Visual Arts as it helped him in his military career, “I was able to complete projects a lot easier because I was concentrating on the task.”. The focus and more comprehensive perspective on a broader composition helped Gonzalez complete objectives more thoroughly. 

Street photographers often try to go unnoticed, but Gonzalez is drawn to that connection to his subjects. Tatsuo Suzuki and Masahisa Fukase are amongst the more influential photographers for the style and inspiration to Gonzalez. To get a feel for the creative nature of his camera preferences, it’s impressive to see the wide range of different styles of cameras Gonzalez uses. He labels his Instagram photos with the camera and film brands on Instagram photos @agstreetphotography. 

Gallo does a brilliant job of curation of artists, www.yellowfinearts.com. There will be a new artist on the website mid March.