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Photo Sue Harrison
Nicoletta Poli in her Poli Gallery surrounded by her paintings. |
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Poli is showing a series based on Italian architecture done in Molfetta, Italy, her parents’ birthplace. |
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Drawing on the past
Poli returns to the Italian town her parents left in 1949 to come to America
Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
Sometimes inspiration for something completely new comes from an unusual place — the place you left behind. This turns out to be the case for Provincetown artist Nicoletta Poli who made a pilgrimage to the Italian city of Molfetta last winter to visit the birthplace of her parents and the place she lived as a child from age three to 10.
What she found was a landscape of ancient architecture that spoke to her and led to a series of watercolors and oils called “Terra Mia,” which she will show at her gallery at 389 Commercial St. beginning with a reception from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday. The show will take up one room of the gallery space she shares with her husband, R.G. Knudsen, an abstract painter and musician. Her trademark animal-themed paintings will also be on display.
Poli exudes an earthy sensibility. She has a looseness in her movement and an easy slow smile that is warm and authentic. She seems never to be anything but herself, a vibrant artist with a love for life.
She started out in Hoboken, N.J., in an enclave of immigrants from Molfetta, the city in the heel of the boot of Italy. Her parents were born there but had emigrated to the States in 1949 to have and raise their family of three kids. Her father became ill and the family went back to the more healthful clime in Molfetta; Poli’s family stayed there until her father’s death seven years later. Her mother brought the kids back to America and when Poli grew up she earned a degree in fashion design from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.
“I wanted a career, not to be a starving artist,” Poli says, sitting in her gallery. “My mother had been a seamstress and made expensive clothes like wedding gowns. And I always had a sense of what was coming up as far as fashion trends.”
The choice seemed natural to her but despite that, she says, her heart was always in her painting.
She visited Provincetown, found the local arts community and moved here that fall, ready to drop the career and embrace the starving artist life she had avoided.
She is a self-taught painter and that has given her the ability to develop her own style, which has been largely paintings of animals, specifically, her dogs.
“They were always there and I just started to paint them,” she says.
She recalls her first show at the former Sea Fox (now Enzo’s) and her first sale to the woman who was Madonna’s first agent, a big thrill for the young artist.
She met her future husband, they bought land in Tennessee and started to do the seasonal dance, spending half the year on the Cape and half the year in their rustic Tennessee cabin. But the lack of community and opportunity led them to spend more and more time in Provincetown, and five years ago Poli opened a gallery in Wellfleet which she ran for two years before coming to her present location in Provincetown.
Throughout Poli’s conversation with the Banner, people kept coming into the gallery and exclaiming over the way she captures the essence of dog in her paintings. People whipped out photos of their dogs and asked about her portrait service. (For information about animal portraits, call Poli at 508-487-5480 or log on to www.polipaintings.com) She is as enthusiastic with each encounter and appears to be quite sincere when she asks them to stop by with their dogs next time.
Last winter, in the midst of mountains of snow, she decided to go to Italy to take a watercolor class with Provincetown artist Gail Browne in Rubella. She visited a cousin in Rome and went to Molfetta for the first time in 20 years. Family members vied for her attention, showering her with elaborate meals and gatherings. That she expected, but what she didn’t expect was how taken she would be with the architecture of the city whose buildings date back as far as 650 A.D. She made sketches, did watercolors and took lots of pictures since she prefers to paint in her studio.
“Nature is not comfortable,” she says. “There is no place to sit. I did some work there but didn’t like it. I got back to my studio, put on the Italian music and really got into it.”
She loves the softness and roundness of the shapes she found and the way time has muted the colors while leaving them deep and rich. As for her shift in subject matter, she is accepting of her need to paint ancient buildings and young dogs.
“It’s very comfortable,” she says. “It’s a road that needs to be traveled now.”
artseditor@provincetownbanner.com
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In the Arts
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Sep 15th, 2005