Paul Baldassini Virtual One Man Show

Paul Baldassini’s meticulously rendered oil paintings present a depth beyond two dimensions, integral knowledge of botany, and amazing beauty beyond what is normally seen by the human eye.

The Addison Art Gallery is pleased to virtually present his 2020 One Man Show and, for every work purchased June 22 through June 28, will make a donation to the Joe Andruzzi Foundation. The Joe Andruzzi Foundation is committed to providing help, hope, and a reason to smile, for New England cancer patients and their families by contributing financial support when it is needed most.

Baldassini’s stunning masterworks can be see at https://addisonart.com/paul-baldassini/ . For more information or to reserve work, please email helen@addisonart.com.

Videos featuring Paul at work and commenting on his paintings can be seen here https://addisonart.com/paul-baldassini/videos/

As a professional designer, photographer, and digital image editor, Paul Baldassini owned and managed Paul Baldassini Graphic Design for over 25 years in Boston’s Back Bay where his creative team provided graphic design and advertising services to a diverse range of clients including corporate, private and non-profit organizations. Paul has a reputation for producing quality products through a combination of originality in design and composition, materials and technical competence that have earned him representation and commendations in esteemed settings and publications. Paul has a BFA in Illustration/Graphic Arts from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston and is a Signature Member of the New England Watercolor Society, (NEWS). A native of Quincy, Massachusetts, Paul, his wife and daughter reside in Middletown, Connecticut.

Having had some traditional training, Paul considers himself a self-taught painter due to his total immersion into a highly self-motivated learning process outside the realm of formal instruction — for the most part, self-taught. Through his dedicated study of 16th and 17th century master painters, combined with his vast knowledge of modern painting techniques and digital tools, Paul attends to details that give his paintings a mannered, but nonetheless, arresting quality. His technique is very similar to that of the old masters — a structured approach that utilizes a monochrome underpainting with direct overpainting, minimal glazing and scumbling and the use of a special medium.

Paul’s sketchbook is a digital camera with a macro lens which he uses to create compelling compositions that combine rhythm & repetition with light and shadow effects. The tripartite nature of the process — the object itself, the photograph of the object, and the translation of both into a painting — goes beyond the mere copying of a static reference. Although Paul paints flowers, its the adverbs and adjectives used to describe them that are the subjects of his paintings. “I continue to be awed by the mathematics of repeating patterns underlying their beauty. Their color and variety command my attention while the blossoming of a flower triggers the sense that something miraculous is coming.”

The paintings Paul creates are based on a composite of many images. Like much great art, they are a combination of fact and fiction. As a digital image editor for most of his professional career of more than 40 years, Paul now uses digital technology to examine and edit, larger than life, the flowers he photographs. Whereas a still life painter seeks to capture an impression of a fleeting moment of light and time, Paul methodically seeks to reveal the intricacy and elegance of their design. He spends hours exploring the design possibilities before putting brush to canvas. Throughout the process, and especially when photographing his reference images, Paul appreciates moments of inspiration, and later, seeing his works hung on the gallery wall — the actual painting being mostly just hard work and technical competence.