Landscape, light, mythology, classical architecture, geometric shapes ... profound and playful ... browns and blues ... these are the hallmarks of Claudio Viscardi's  paintings.  Beara has been the inspiration for much of his work in recent years.  His paintings portray a place of spectacularly rugged beauty.  “A visionary poet,” was how art critic Vittore Casiglioni described Claudio Viscardi in a critique of one of his Swiss exhibitions.  He went on to talk about the work's “meditative quality, luminous clarity, a soulful landscape leading into another world, calm and metaphysical ...” Viscardi prepares his own cavasses and mixes his own paints using earth and mineral pigments as done by old masters over generations.  From a remote mountain valley in south-east Switzerland, generations of Viscardis have travelled out to work as architects and artists.  Since 1984 he has been living in Ireland and is both an Irish and Swiss citizen.  Claudio Viscardi has been exhibiting in the Frank Lewis gallery since 1995.