Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Visitors to the Freeport Recreation Center’s Art Alcove will now find themselves welcomed into a whimsical and deeply personal universe created by Queens-based artist Annamarie Carcione.
Her new solo exhibit, which opened on April 30, features a series of vivid, mixed-media paintings that explore the beauty of everyday life through the lens of nature, animals and emotion.
Born, raised, and still living in the Middle Village neighborhood of Queens, Carcione, 32, is both a fine artist and a scenic artist, currently working on Netflix’s “The Night Agent” and with past credits on HBO’s “The Gilded Age” and Netflix’s “The Watcher,” as well as a number of other shows. She is a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 829, and has been painting sets for television, movies, fashion shows, and theater since 2013.
But the work now on display in Freeport is from a different part of her artistic life — one that’s more intimate.
“I’ve been into doing art my whole life,” Carcione told the Herald. “I work as a scenic artist on TV shows and I paint scenery, but I also do my own visual art, which is what I’m showing. And I love animals and nature, and most of my art is pretty much based off of that.”
Her work, primarily painting in a mixed-media style that begins in acrylic and finishes in oil, draws heavily on her love of plants and animals. She shares her home with four cats, two geckos and a bearded dragon, and volunteers at a nearby animal shelter.
That love of animals is understandable, given that she has long struggled with social anxiety. “I’ve always had anxiety,” Carcione said. “So making art is a way that I communicate, and it’s something that I’ve just always been into my whole life. It’s how I show the world what I see and how I feel.”
Art, for Carcione, offers a way to both escape and connect. “It pushes me to communicate with people,” she said. “And I feel like when people get a painting they like, or I do a commission for someone and they’re really happy, it just feels good to be able to have that interaction and give someone something in the universe that I can actually do.”
Her paintings blend everyday realism with a quirky, surreal flair — images from her own world, often reimagined in a dreamy, colorful light.
“Sometimes I just make up paintings in my head, like I just see them,” she explained. “And it’s like something that’s kind of perky and strange, and it’s kind of in its own world — so it’s just like creating that reality.”
The opportunity to show her work in Freeport came after she was put in touch with Larry Dresner, executive director Long Island Council of the Arts, by an attendee at an Arts in the Plaza event in Long Beach.
“(I) thought it was a good opportunity to start and show my work,” Carcione said, “and it worked out pretty good.”
Asked about her work, Dresner texted that Carcione has a unique style and very eye-catching paintings.
For visitors to the Art Alcove, Carcione hopes her work inspires a sense of calm and appreciation for what’s right in front of us. Her art will remain on view at the Recreation Center through the coming weeks. To learn more about it — including her recent illustration of the children’s book “Bugging Out with Natalia Vidalia,” about a young entomologist, written by her cousin Angela Carcione — visit her website, annamariecarcione.com.
For anyone who has ever sought a quiet escape or a reminder of the everyday magic in plants, animals and the imagination, Carcione’s exhibit offers a glimpse into a vibrant inner world — one that she now invites others to see.
