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"The
Work of Cav. Romeo Di Girolamo PRBA", |
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page 4 |
back to the Journey | |||||||
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| "Local
Face", an
article taken from Wendover
News, April 1998 edition, by Jane Larkham, Editor |
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"There is a vulnerability in
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My father's work
changed when he moved to Aylesbury and began to study in High Wycombe.
To enter a new town he first had to produce his papers at the police station
to register as an alien. The industries that thrived in the late fifties
employed many immigrants. Romeo found that he was moved to paint the
factories and the canals in the half-light of the townscape, soft sun seeping
through the smog into a myriad of colours. These paintings emit a brooding
mysticism. There are fences, keep-out signs and barbed wire, perhaps
to keep the anger out, to keep the memories in, to contain the alienation.
It was at this time that his paintings first met with public acclaim.
Romeo exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists
when he was just a teenager. "What does the circle mean to you Papa?"
I asked, noticing that it occurs in his paintings of every period.
"It's peaceful, a symbol of continuity, and at the same time it's something
to aim for, like a football or a target." Aiming for peace. This, more than any other statement encapsulates for me the feeling present in all Romeo's work. That peace is something tangible, once held and now gone, though fleetingly glimpsed like that round sun. It is there for a moment in the work of the seventies. In the face of a small child staring through green Venetian blinds at her sister on a swing in a wild garden, in the vast expanse of sodden sand, sea-smoothed stones and reflected sky on an empty beach. There is vulnerability in these paintings, a tenderness that hangs in the space between the power of nature and the human experience. It is the same overwhelming paradox of strength and fragility that one feels when encountering a newborn child. An involved and affectionate father, his emotional availability is communicated through his work of this time. |
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