Sept. 16, 2003 – A lot of people know Tony Romano the St. Thomas restaurateur. Some also know Tony Romano the visual artist and Tony Romano the jazz musician. With Romano's restaurant closed until mid-October for its annual pre-season hiatus, the painter/saxophone player is having the time of his life this week and next in New York.
Romano the artist is featured in a group exhibition that opened last Friday at the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in New York's trendy Chelsea district (which the gallery Web site describes as "the epicenter of the art world").
The show will hang through Oct. 7, and there'll be a champagne "opening" reception this Thursday, where quite a collection of St. Thomas residents and regular visitors are expected to put in an appearance.
Romano the jazz saxophonist has been invited to sit in next Tuesday at Birdland in mid-town Manhattan with the Duke Ellington Orchestra directed by Paul Mercer Ellington and Jack Jeffers. But that's just a bit of serendipitous icing on the artistic cake. It's the Amsterdam Whitney show that took Romano to New York.
About six months ago, he relates, he was perusing his latest issue of Art News magazine, checking out the open gallery invitations to artists to submit their portfolios. "I picked this one," he said, referring to the Amsterdam Whitney, "and sent in samples of my work."
Two weeks later, to his surprise, "they contacted me and said they wanted to represent me."
At that point, he introduced himself over the telephone to gallery co-owner and curator Ruthie Tucker and sent her some "slides, photographs, press material." Last week, he set foot in the gallery for the first time. His initial impression: "Wow! What a beautiful space!"
Romano has seven paintings in the exhibition, which is collectively titled "Invisible Reality." Also represented are two other artists, Juan Perez, a New Jersey physician and Cuban emigre, and James Patitucci, who cites Chicago as his "artistic playground" and whose works are largely improvisational. Simultaneously, the gallery has mounted a second showing of work by three other artists, titled "Paradoxical Transfigurations."
"Each artist has his or her own wall," Romano explains, describing the Amsterdam Whitney as "a well-lighted, lovely venue for displaying my work." The gallery has "15-foot ceilings and gorgeous hardwood floors" and is "decorated very unusually with period antiques throughout the space," he says.
According to Tucker, who has three decades of experience as an art museum, gallery and auction house executive, including work at the Guggenheim Museum, "Tony dominates the exhibition."
'A position of honor'
Tucker says she was attracted to Romano's work by "his vibrant colors, the joie de vivre, the passion, the happiness, the sense of love and romance. He's a color expressionist. He's in a position of honor here at the gallery."
Romano says his artistic output lately has been focused "on emotional subjects, anything to do with romance and music." Four of his pieces in the galley exhibition have musicians as the subject matter. One, titled "Intangible Fusion," depicts three instrumentalists.
It's a painting that should be familiar to anyone who visited this year's Caribbean Colour fine art exhibition held in May on St. Thomas — where it took first prize in the oils category — or caught it later in a show at Alexander's Café of the prize-winning Caribbean Colour works.
On St. Thomas, his work also has been featured in shows at the Gallery in the Grand Hotel.
Although he "drew and sketched quite a bit in college," Romano didn't pursue an art career. Marriage and working as a chef in his uncle's restaurant in Cumberland, Maryland, for 12 years took him in other directions.
He moved to St. Thomas in 1985 and worked at The Bridge, the Yacht Haven Marina eatery, and then managed the Jimmy'z night spot in Contant before it became Club Z. In 1988, he opened Romano's, a restaurant in a former house on the Coki Point road that specializes in Northern Italian cuisine.
In 1999, a serious medical problem landed him in the hospital, and that became the catalyst for taking up art again. "During that time, a friend of mine who had seen my sketchbooks brought me some paints," he recalls, "and that's when I started painting."
Among his mentors he counts Miguel Gomez, a professor of art in the Dominican Republic, who "really encouraged my work."
The after-midnight oils
While keeping his "night job" as not only owner but chef at his restaurant, he's developed a routine that only an artist could love: "I paint five nights a week for between three and five hours. I start when I get home about 1 a.m. There are no interruptions. I put on some nice music, and I usually paint until I see the sun coming up."
His choice of music tends toward classical and jazz — "Mozart in particular." And he says his studio at his Nazareth home affords him "gorgeous views of the sun rising over St. John."
However, such images don't emerge from his palette. His paintings have been for the most part semi-abstract, and a recent commission was for what became his first entirely abstract work.
"I got a commission to do a piece for the board room of FirstBank Plaza in Fort Mylner from Ricardo Charaf, the developer," he said. "He gave me full rein of what I wanted to do. I did not want a typical landscape. It had to be abstract. I did a triptych titled 'Finding the Middle Ground.' The first panel is 'Proposal,' the second "Negotiation,' and the third 'Settlement.' I also wrote a narrative describing it."
To view a selection of Romano's paintings, visit his display space on the Yessy Art Gallery Web site as well as the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery site promoting the current show.
Among the St. Thomas friends he's expecting to see at Thursday's reception are attorney Norman Jones and his wife, Joni; A.H. Riise executive Filippo Cassinelli and his wife, Tricia; attorney Winston Taylor; businessman Melvin Fleming; and Crystal Cove condos manager Frank Berry.
And on Friday evening, some New York friends who've visited St. Thomas often are hosting a cocktail reception in his honor at their home.
Now, as for the music gig:
"I'm a musician," Romano says matter-of-factly. "I play tenor saxophone. I have played with a lot of local artists," including jazz sax man Joe Ramsay and Jake and Barry Adams.
Running a well-known restaurant on a tourist-oriented island, he's met his share of celebrities. One of them is Paul Mercer Ellington, grandson of the Duke. "He inherited his father's orchestra and they play every Tuesday night at Birdland," he explained, "and he invited me to sit in next Tuesday."
Music remains an avocation, however, while his art persona is gaining professional prominence. But Romano says he doesn't feel over-extended. "I'm pacing myself," he says. "Because I have a business, I can paint what I want, not just what I think will sell. I think that's why it is selling — I'm painting from my heart."

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