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"The Work of Cav. Romeo Di Girolamo PRBA",
by Selina Di Girolamo

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"Local Face", an article taken from Wendover News,
April 1998 edition, by Jane Larkham, Editor		  
     
     
"To speak about the work is to speak about the man."
Drying Fish
 Looking through the photographs of my father's work I am moved to ask him "What do you feel are the recurring themes in your painting?"  Like most truly creative people he does not set out to express a specific thought or idea.  His work is a response to the world around him. To speak about the work is to speak about the man.  As his daughter, I am in a better position than most to speak with some authority.

From very early childhood Romeo's paintings were a powerful presence in our home.  I remember large soft suns, blue cliffs separated by just a breath from strips of the sky and a vast expanse of sea.  These works seemed to exude openness and gentle light.  They hung in contrast alongside  the paintings of the 1950s and 60s.  Alienating in mood, the viewer catches a glimpse of viscious green rain-swollen clouds through indigo barbed wire. There are always barriers in these paintings, a railing too high to climb, creating geometric patterns of shadow that frame the smoke belching chimneys beyond.  Often vermilion signs scream "Keep out", "Danger", "No Entry". Though foreboding, the technical skill is astounding.  In these works Romeo manipulates colour and tone so that purple behaves like black or white, pulling and pushing the picture plane into a semblance of  illusionary space with an economy of palette and mark making.

But what do these early paintings mean?  "I don't think like that, I'm an artist. If I could express it in words I would be a writer." Romeo is reluctant to analyse.  I ask him about the shapes that reoccur in most of his paintings, the circle or disc of the sun and the vertical shaft of tree or chimney or mast.  What do these forms mean to him? "Well if I think about it they remind me of the church tower with its large clock face.  It was always visible from everywhere around my village in Italy."  Perhaps we can see these shapes as reference points - an anchor that means "home", and acceptance.
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