
M. Pia De Girolamo	Contemporary Artwork

M. Pia De Girolamo

A blog about art.

Category: Insights

A Valentine's Day Meditation

Byways by M. Pia De Girolamo © ,Acrylic on canvas, 48" x 48" Most of my paintings, though abstract, reference the landscape. Occasionally a figure or part of a figure works its way in, sometimes by choice and sometimes by chance. The painting above is one of those. I started...

Consider the Raven: Looking Back on the Old Year While Facing the New.

Raven at Lost Lake, BC, Canada. Photo by M. Pia De Girolamo This summer, during a trip to British Columbia, I had the rich experience of observing ravens and many other animals and seeing them appear in the art and stories of the First Nations (indigenous people of Canada). On a hike...

Art and Free Speech: Some thoughts about the "purpose" of art.

Fall has Arrived by M. Pia De Girolamo, Acrylic on Yupo Paper. Art has a purpose-actually many purposes. I think its first “purpose” is just to come into existence “ad maiorem Dei gloriam”, or “for the greater glory of God”. Let me clarify: I...

The Art of Friendship

Gray Seashore by M. Pia De Girolamo 2012 © Acrylic on Canvas 36" x 36" I do most of my work in the solitude of my studio. It is quiet; I don’t play music (except once in a great while). I do hear bird sounds and the wind or rain and I have large windows...

How to drive yourself crazy as an artist: obsess about originality

My friend, artist Tom Hlas has written 2 blog posts recently at http://tomhlas.com/blog/ that have got me thinking about the issue of originality in art. In his posts “Too Much Art” and “The Bigger Picture” he expresses the worry that his work (beautiful, by the way)...

Powerful Words

Through the Veil by M. Pia De Girolamo © 2012 Acrylic on Canvas 36" x 36" An artist, Joyce Wycoff, who I follow on Twitter and Facebook wrote a blog post http://joycewycoff.blogspot.com/2012/01/artist-statements-evaluation.html about creating a strong artist statement. We...

Lost and Found in a Labyrinth?

Labyrinth at St. Thomas Church, Whitemarsh, PA For reasons now forgotten, a few weeks ago I was looking up labyrinths on the internet and found to my surprise there was a large one installed practically “in my own backyard”, on the grounds of St. Thomas’ Church in...

The Japanese Pen and "The Artist's Way"

One of my Christmas presents this year was a Japanese fountain pen. You can see it in the photo above. There are two cranes on it. The word for crane in Japanese is “tsuru”-don’t ask me how I remember this. I learned the word sometime in childhood and it got stuck...

Painting Epiphanies.

Study for a Commission, Brushes program on iPad It’s January 6, so happy Epiphany to you! In Italy, on the eve of the Epiphany, La Befana, a magical old lady, brings gifts to the children in commemoration of the gifts of the Magi to the Christ child in the stable. I...

Procrastination Holding You Back? Try These Strategies.

Where are You? by M. Pia De Girolamo, Oil stick on paper, 2008© Recently I had a bit of a tussle with procrastination around some heavy duty “administrative stuff”. In this case, it fell primarily to me to put a childhood family second home on the market,...

Painting Mysteries

Flowing brustrokes 2008 My parents loved art and in our house we had original art on the walls. There was nothing by anyone famous (no undiscovered Vermeers), just work they fell in love with in their travels or by artists they had met. Among my...

Take Your Kids to the Gallery, Museum, Studio Day...

This weekend I exhibited work in the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours event and a friend, her husband and teenaged children were among my visitors. Whether or not the kids came willingly I don’t know but I think it was great that their parents brought them and exposed them to...

On Making and Showing Art: What's Worked So Far

Kohala Beach Acrylic on Canvas 11 x 14 Evaluating my art-making and art-showing experiences over the past few years prompted me to write down a few highlights. Truthfully, there is nothing earth-shattering here or anything that can’t be found in other places on...