I am a painter whose primary medium is acrylic on canvas. I live in the Greater Philadelphia area. I produced work for 15 solo exhibitions, most recently at Cerulean Arts Gallery in Philadelphia in September 2023, and notably, at the Museo Mastroianni of the Musei di San Salvatore in Lauro, Rome in October 2018. I exhibit extensively in juried group shows regionally, including most recently in The Delaware Contemporary Art Museum' summer show, Radius in Wilmington, Delaware.
In 2022, the Philadelphia Arts Advocacy organization Inliquid asked me to be the first Artist in Residence at Park Towne Place. At PTP I researched the history of this mid-century modern apartment complex and created site specific works on paper in a variety of media including, charcoal, oil stick, and linocut block print.
In 2017, Ross Lance Mitchell, Director of the Barnes-de Mazia Education and Outreach Programs at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA selected my work for inclusion in an exhibition at Main Line Art Center in Haverford, PA.
Awards include Best in Show at the Wayne Art Center Regional Juried Spring Open Exhibition 2019 (Juror: Stuart Shils, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), 2nd place in Alfa Art Gallery 's New Brunswick Art Salon 2015-2016 Juried Exhibition Series, Honorable Mention (Juror: Richard Rosenfeld, Rosenfeld Gallery) in the 2011 Montgomery County Guild of Professional Artists Spring Juried Show, Honorable Mention in 2010 in the Main Line Art Center's 72nd Anniversary Members' Exhibition, Haverford, PA, and in 2008, a Juror's Choice Award in Montgomery County Guild of Professional Artists, "World of the Professional Artist" Exhibition.
In 2022 and 2023 Tidings of Magpies Magazine featured my paintings and essays on art. The Marathon Literary Review, the biannual literary magazine of Arcadia University's MFA in Creative Writing published images of my paintings in February 2017. In 2007 and 2009 Victoria Donohoe reviewed my work in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
My paintings are in a museum collection in the Musei Di San Salvatore in Lauro, Rome, Italy and in corporate collections including those of PNC Bank Tower Headquarters, Pittsburgh, PNC Bank Corporate Office, Berwyn, PA, PNC Wealth Management, Bluebell PA, and Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA.
I received a BA in Art History with a concentration in Architecture from Barnard College, Columbia University and an MD degree from the University of Rochester. I lecture on the intersection between Art and Medicine and the interrelationship of Art, Nature and Health.
My recent acrylic paintings highlight aspects of the urban landscape of Philadelphia and its suburbs where I live. When I find a particularly compelling composition in either suburban or urban scenes, one that has some element that I find interesting-how a pine looks silhouetted against a bright sky or how the lines, bridges and ramps crisscross and create movement, I take photos. Back in the studio I interpret the scene in acrylic paint. Sometimes, I make several paintings of the same scene, asking what happens if I change up the palette or focus on a different part of the scene. As a former art history major with a concentration in architecture, I appreciate the contrasts between the historic buildings and the modern. Along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, there is a lively interplay of form and line between the old and new buildings and the bridges and roadways. In the suburbs, hard edged structures like sheds, watertowers and houses coexist and stand in contrast with pockets of nature.
My prior series of acrylic paintings on canvas and panel include large wall-sized to smaller and medium-sized works based on family and friends. The paintings are abstracted versions of the models. In my earlier landscape-based work, the human form rarely made an appearance. After two years of confinement due to the COVID pandemic, reconnecting with family and friends rekindled the strong impulse to paint the people I cherish. In addition, I found myself drawn to figures in action including myself which convey joy, energy and intensity, which is the opposite of what I experienced during the pandemic lockdown.
During the pandemic lockdown itself, I painted a series of representational acrylic paintings on canvas based on a friend's posted images of flowers on her Instagram site. She focused on their formal qualities like the varied shapes of seed pods, leaf patterns, or the sculptural look of a single flower, which were qualities that interested me as well in my painting. I asked her if I could paint from these photos. In my series, botanical forms convey emotions, such as loss in a painting with brown, shriveling lotus leaves, a meditative state as seen in a work with floating lotuses on a transparent pink and golden background, and exuberance in the spiky repeating patterns of hot-colored leaves with the yellow eyes of a leopard peering through them.
Prior to the pandemic, I painted natural and urban landscapes based on travel to places as varied as Patagonia, Iceland and Italy relying on a combination of memory and sketches and photos made in the field to render the essence of place, rather than a realistic depiction. These paintings echo the American modernist tradition as embodied by artists such as Milton Avery, Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keefe.
Selected work is available at:
Cerulean Arts Gallery
1355 Ridge Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19123
267-514-8647
ceruleanarts.com
Magpies Magazine "An Interview With Pia De Girolamo: Bring Back the Light," February 2026. An in-depth interview exploring her latest series Urbs/Suburbs: The Four Seasons, examining how she captures Philadelphia's urban and suburban landscapes through color, light, and the passage of time.
The Fitler Focus "Doctor Trades Stethoscope for Paintbrush in Fitler Square" by Stacia Friedman, March 2025. A neighborhood profile exploring how, after years of treating patients, Pia De Girolamo picked up a paintbrush and never looked back, finding inspiration along the Schuylkill and around the world.
Canvas Rebel "Meet Pia De Girolamo," November 2024. A feature interview discussing the personal background and context behind her artwork.
Chaddsford Live "Garden" by Victoria Flickinger, March 2022. A piece exploring De Girolamo's unique artistic perspective and its resonance with contemporary audiences.
WhatsArtBlog by Carol Taylor-Kearney. A critical review examining the weight, structure, and bold color choices in De Girolamo's paintings and collages, drawing comparisons to Marsden Hartley and Milton Avery.
"The paintings and collages of Pia De Girolamo are heavy like the land and the animals that they portray. Part of the reason for this is that they are large, part is that they are shaped like blocks—either squares or horizontal rectangles, and part is the thick application of paint. This is an artist who is not afraid to move the paint around and make unexpected color choices. Not that the skies are not blue, sometimes they are, as well as pink and yellow, gray and white. But the sky is painted as solid as the ground plane becoming another delineated shape on the canvas, not atmosphere or weather. This lends itself less to creating an expanse with depth as a space that is divided and mapped. Which, of course, made me think of all the mountain paintings of Marsden Hartley and some by Milton Avery. And I began to relate to these paintings differently than I would a plein air painting or a more traditionally painted landscape, not as a report on what mountains look like but what it feels like to be dwarfed by the mountain, to be moving from one part of the terrain to another, to be IN THE MOUNTAINS as a solid figure measuring time through spatial distribution."
Marathon Literary Review. Issue 11, February 2017. A selection of De Girolamo's paintings featured in Arcadia University's MFA in Creative Writing biannual literary magazine.
DonArtNews Philadelphia Art Blog "Review of Pyramid Club Solo Show & Artist Interview" by Don Brewer, November 2013. A review of De Girolamo's solo exhibition at the Pyramid Club atop the Mellon Tower, featuring bold abstract paintings with naturalistic elements.
Skinny Artist "21 Artists to Watch in 2013," 2013. A feature profiling De Girolamo as a uniquely talented abstract artist whose layered work engages both the conscious and subconscious mind.
"These are unpremeditated acts of creation in which feeling is paramount. Using acrylic paint on paper, this Ambler artist, often working large, mingles a bold, thorough traditionalist's concern for drawing with an unusual, highly effective way of conveying the power of light and color directly. Distinguished by broad, brushy, autographic gestures often in bright hues, her works in this strong show allow chance associations to suggest theme and image."