All About Chiara (an artist we love who just had her first solo exhibition!)

Normally there is virtually nothing that can entice my mother to go out of our apartment after dark. She happily settles in to a routine of PBS Newshour and snacks, dinner, some entertaining TV, and an early bedtime. Usually, I am happy to provide all that, and even put a little extra effort into dinner, but recently I persuaded her to come with me to see our friend Chiara’s opening of her first solo show of paintings at Link University here in Rome. As first solo shows go, it was a pretty big deal, and a featured part of Rome Art Week.

Chiara Pasqualotto has been my friend for many years and we met in the U.S. through a connection at the University of

Michigan. As someone with a background in art history, who worked in contemporary art galleries and in public art, I pride 

myself on having a good eye, and recognizing talent. Chiara has had it since I first met her, when she was just beginning her journey as an artist. Here is the first work of art I owned by her, a gift, and a portrait of my cat Cocco, staring out the window of my Manhattan apartment. Later, Chiara and I collaborated on a children’s book idea entitled

Al and Ralph dine at the Raccoon Lodge      

Alfonso’s Arrest, about an alligator who gets lost in New York and ends up getting unjustly arrested. His best friend Ralph, a raccoon who lives in Central Park’s Belvedere Castle, rescues him and they celebrate over dinner. We have tried to get this idea to a publisher with no luck so far, but here is one of Chiara’s exceptional illustrations for this story.

When Chiara first told me about her abstract paintings I was startled by the total departure from her figurative work in drawing and illustration. But the more I looked, the more I understood that this was a natural evolution for her as an artist. Her landscapes were increasingly dreamlike, and I saw the paintings as a freeing kind of color exploration that enabled Chiara to play with organic shapes in movement, overlapping tones and hues that created a harmonious feeling of joy on the canvas. I fell in love with her paintings!

Last December, I decided with my mother that we should buy one as a Christmas present to ourselves. It hangs in our living room where we look at it constantly and never tire of it.

Since Chiara has begun doing work in printmaking, we also own two of her recent etchings, one of an owl, and one of a sycamore seed. The sycamore trees line the Tiber, and I feel her tiny pod is a little love letter to Rome. I have always been fond of owls (and dissecting their pellets with elementary kids). Chiara’s owl is so soulful and bursting with personality that for me, only

Raphael in the Vatican

Raphael comes close to her perfection.

We arrived at the opening when only a few people were there, which enabled us to have a very nice time alone with Chiara admiring all the paintings lining the hallways by the university’s café space, especially one that she said was the “brother” of our painting. Soon the curator and other admirers had arrived, and my mother was ready to head home, so we slowly made our way back to the car, talking about how glad we were that we came, and saw Chiara’s beautiful work in such a perfect setting.

Maureen ponders one of Chiara's paintings

I know that these experiences with art and beauty, like the transcendent concerts we have attended in Rome, are deeply meaningful for my mother and for me. She easily forgets what happened in the news the day before, but she never forgets Chiara. We get to admire her artwork all over our apartment, and her painting is a vibrant pulsation of color and organic forms that feels constantly in motion, just like life.

Chiara gets around Rome on her bike