paul baldassini portrait with rhododendron painting

FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS I HAVE BEEN ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN THE DESIGN AND CREATION OF ARTWORK. From a very early age and using the simplest of tools, a pencil, I quickly discovered that I loved to draw. From that followed a passionate interest in oil painting, photography, then fiber art, and finally, around 1987 or so, image editing. There were other vocational interests as well – graphic design, typography, pre-press and print production – but those were in the service of a professional career that consumed roughly 30 years.

Looking back I find that through all of the years as a professional designer I always found the time to study and create artwork, all outside the realm of formal education. My work evolved in roughly four 12-year cycles. Each cycle informed the subsequent one, leading to new insights and revelations about the things that matter to me most about the creation of art – history, composition, color, materials and technique. For example, my trips to national and European art museums in the 1980s significantly informed and influenced my approach to both watercolor and oil painting methods, materials and techniques. My 30 years as a graphic designer specializing in print graphics influenced my understanding and use of both additive (.cmyk) and subtractive (.rgb) color models in my color palette choices. From my study of typography I learned that effective design was beholden to more than just interesting imagery. Bargello needlepoint revealed the beauty of repeating patterns, which was echoed in my floral work. The sketching I did with a pencil every morning at the Travis Café on Newbury Street, around the corner from my Boston studio, inspired the brush strokes and marks I made to create my Café watercolors, a series of large-format watercolor paintings based on my café sketching and photography (you can view all of them via the Site Map, bottom). Those marks have in turn morphed into the marks I use to create my landscapes in oil.

In the 1990s I switched back to oil painting producing a series of “Old Master” large-format works based on reference material collected from numerous trips to art museums in Europe and the United States while working professionally as a graphic artist and designer in my Back Bay Boston-based company. At the turn of the Millennium, my family and I moved to CT where I soon began a series of “farm and field” oil paintings focusing mostly on older tractors in landscape settings, then in 2012, I began a series of large-format highly realistic floral works which continued up until June of 2023. Currently I have returned to what originally beckoned to me when I first moved to Connecticut – the landscape – and since September 2023 have begun a series of large format expressive and (almost) tonalist “invented’  landscapes. The works are in oil, based on observation, memory, and some reference imagery. I plan on continuing this series for much longer than 10-12 years.

SHOWINGS & COMMENDATIONS

International Artist magazine February/March 2021 “Working with Colors” 8-page article including demonstration.

American Art Collector magazine June 2019 issue No. 164, 2-page editorial review.

International Artist magazine February/March 2019 “Florals & Gardens” Challenge No. 109 2nd Place Award winner.

International Artist magazine December/January 2017 “A Structured Approach” cover and 8-page article including demonstration.

Pratique des Arts magazine Issue No. 134 June 2017 “Scenes of cafes that connect people” 4-page interview about the Café watercolors.

International Artist magazine February/March 2015 “Florals & Gardens” Challenge No. 85 Finalist Award winner.

Artist’s magazine March 2015 “Over 60” Competition Award Winner Finalist

Wesleyan University — Zilkha Gallery “Art for Haiti” 6 paintings on display in group showing.

Guild of Boston Artists, Newbury Street, Boston — Group show

Signature Member of the New England Watercolor Society, (NEWS).

“The Face of America” Traveling show ,1994, Olde Forge, New York, including Andrew Wyeth, Philip Pearlstein, and other nationally known artists.