SALEM – USA
2012 / 2014 / 2017
Charlie, a figurative painter working in Salem, Massachusetts with his wife Christine, has come to Il Palmerino several times, but the couple’s frequent travels in Europe has allowed them to become very close with various locations and deepen their understanding through experiencing, particularly of Florence and Tuscany, even in a limited time. This progressive closeness has created a strong bond between us, and being able to host and welcome Charlie's sensitive and tactful work has been a great honor. His work retains a descriptive and illustrative quality that comes from his earlier training and that fits well with the narrative element of travel.
Interested especially in the garden exteriors, in his residence at Il Palmerino, Charlie created a series of drawings and watercolor paintings. When he returned to is studio in Salem, MA (USA), he transformed them into a series of 15 oil paintings entitled: "Italian Hours: Shadowing Henry James" that was then shown in a solo exhibition at Marblehead Arts Association in 2013, and of which he also pulled a folder of graphic prints of the sketches that he donated to us.
The friendship that arose between the family, the association, and the complicity even from afar made it possible to choose and use one of his beautiful drawings of the mansion as the basis for the poster we created for the realization of our most important project the staging of Vernon Lee's text The Ballet of Nations, and to match it with the original illustration of the 1916 edition. This trace of it will remain indelible in our world that traverses space-time or regenerates it with such receptive presences of history and previous influences.
Thanks to his contribution of spreading the word about our residency, other incredible artists have come to Il Palmerino, and his testimony has been instrumental in bringing them closer and making them curious to discover us.