New Member Spotlight

Paola Bidinelli

What are your earliest memories of being artistic? I realized I was an artist very early in my childhood when my grandfather, Giovanni, while sitting in his lap, whispered his wonderful poems in my ear. When he did so, I traveled to a magical world where every single word turned into a fragment of image and all together they made a landscape of the soul.

Even today, when I paint, I seem to plunge back into those white memories and listen to the warm voice of a poet.

When did art become a pursuit? When I noticed that the first thing I did after getting out of my bed in the morning was check my drawings from the day before. It gradually became a physiological necessity that began to have repercussions on my spirit, radically changing my lifestyle and my vision of the world.

Are you self-taught or formally educated in visual art? I began painting by experimenting on my own. After several years of strictly solitary work, I started attending the private studio of the painter, Lucio Bulgarelli, explosive personality of the Piazza del Popolo’s School, in Rome, Italy. This school also is represented by other great artists of the 60s, such as Giulio Turcato, Annibale Biglione, Mario Schifano, Tano Festa, Franco Angeli, Giosetta Fioroni. Through the example of such innovative artists, I learned to be hard working, courageous, humble, and seriously committed to discovering my personal path. In addition, I got a Master in Semiology of Art, and for several years I lectured at Universities, Academies and Cultural Institutes, in Italy and Europe.

How did you first become involved with CAA? I moved to the Boston area about a year ago and starting to exhibit my art in a few galleries where I met other artists. One of them told me about the Cambridge Art Association and so I made my application to become a member.

In what other ways are you involved in the local art community? I am a member of Fountain Street Art Gallery and I am involved in the SOWA Program in Boston. I also started a collaboration with the Belmont Gallery of Arts in Belmont, where I live. I’m looking forward to expanding my artistic connections, as well as my friendships, in this beautiful country.

What role do you think the artist plays in society? I confer on the art and the artist the power and the duty to improve the world. Art can have a strong impact on people’s spirit, i.e. on the most important part of humankind. An artist is someone who has the senses turned on, who somehow experiences revelation. Art is a new way of feeling and seeing that enriches the knowledge of reality. It is a spiritual communication, an amplification, a dilator, a microscope that magnifies the detail, a resonator, an enhancer of flavors, sounds and essences. I would say that artists offer bionic glasses to those who accept the challenge of wearing them in order to penetrate the world. In my personal journey, I carry on my Poetics of White series in response to an over-stimulated, digital and so often noisy world that risks us losing touch with the essence of things. My white art is a new challenge to silence, listening and therapeutic fasting to recover the full functionality of the sensorial part of man through imagination. By its structure, the white is a subliminal, archetypal, original, cosmic color. It is the pre-forming and absolute color, a magnetic field of infinite shapes and nuances that polarize the eye and stimulates introspection and perception. In Poetics of White, even the exhibition spaces are like “White Lands” where the viewer is put in

emotional relationship with what he looks at. A space open to the birth of sensations, where recovering the uncontaminated gaze of a child, still able to be amazed, and to perceive the heart of things.

What medium do you currently work in and how did you choose this medium? My main medium is the mixed-media one. I am fascinated by all kinds of materials and their capacity to be so expressive. I find them everywhere and I use them without discrimination for those who are poorer, dirtier or damaged because I know that on the canvas they will reclaim their dignity. Over the years I experienced with many techniques just for the pleasure and curiosity to know their emotional impact on me. But mixed media has kept its primacy over all.

What is your creative process? Where are you finding ideas for your art these days? I start from material, from something I occasionally find, and that inspires me somehow. Materials already have a spirit in and of themselves. If we are careful, we catch this spirit and as artists we can help the material to express it. At the beginning of each work, I have an idea or a concept in my mind but when I start, the idea is lost and a new path opens up that I have to follow without knowing what will happen. Painting becomes a two-handed dance with an uncertain outcome. It is a challenge that I accept every time. If you are not adventurous you can not be an artist. My work becomes a living being and always surprises me. It is a process that starts from a word and evolves into a speech, a dialogue, an exchange of ideas. It is an act of knowledge and learning.

The subjects of my paintings are the details, small parts of a totality, that kidnap me. I am a natural explorer and I can see beauty everywhere. The mixed media with impasto allows me to make visible the gestural intervention of the brush or the spatula. It makes the surface vibratile as if the painting were dug into the canvas. It makes the light reflect in a particular way and adds expressiveness to the painting with a three-dimensional resolution.White color allows me to build an image where shapes, spaces and time are connected and harmonized in a unique relationship. What comes out is the emotion aroused by the impact with the materials I use. The idea of making the invisible visible is the leitmotif of my whole life and my art. I want the breath of the invisible, the forgotten, the hidden to come out.

Apparently inert matter actually reveals its archetype, its dynamic principle. When it happens I feel like an instrument, more than a creator, and the more I am open to the random flowing of things, the more I am an effective tool.

In your opinion, what’s your best/favorite piece you’ve made? Honestly, the one which I emotionally fought most for. But the final outcome has been the peace of mind and my total relaxation in front of it. A win!

“Quietude and Contemplation” -by the Inside the Creation series- it’s a 30 x 40 inch mixed media on canvas, one of my recent works.

What is one of your artistic goals for 2018? It’s to bring my Poetics of White to the large public in America through exhibitions as “The manifestation of the whites”, a cultural-artistic event in favor of light in the world. I’m working on a contest reserved for international artists who participate with an original white work.

What’s your favorite place to see art? Directly in the artist’s studio. It preserves the warmth of the creative process.

Do you own any art by other artists? Yes, I have works from other artists, mostly friends who gave me them as a gift or which I have exchanged pieces of art with.

Do you have any shows coming up? Currently, I have ongoing exhibits at:

-Coldwell Banker, CAA Satellite Space, Cambridge (June-August)

-University Place Gallery, “Still Life:Captured moments”, at Cambridge (July-August)

My upcoming exhibits will be at:

-Freepoint Satellite Gallery, Cambridge (July -September)

-Fountain Street Art Gallery, “Recreating Nature”, Boston (August 3 – 26)

-Belmont Gallery of Arts, “Rhythm and Hues”, Belmont (Settembre 7-Ottobre 12)

-I’ve been selected for the “Alfred Lambourne Arts Prize Exhibition”, Salt Lake City, UT (September-October)

-Sivers Gallery, “Music and Art”, Orlando, FL (October)

-Art Gallery, Vermont, NH (December)

-Arts and Words Gallery, Italy (December)