Presenting Artist Daniela Maccheroni from Pisa Italy
Irish sculptor Fergal Donnelly and I met painter Daniela Maccheroni at her exhibit in Pisa on March 17, 2024. Fergal and I had been friends on social media for ages, and this was the first time we ever met, as he vacationed for inspiration in Tuscany. We met at the train station in Pisa and had a wonderful afternoon and then dinner together at a street fest before I left on the train and he stayed in Pisa for an early flight home.
I wanted to show him this cool structure hanging right over a wide sidewalk by the river. It is used for art exhibits and is a distinguishable landmark in Pisa. It was the last day of Daniela's exhibit, so how lucky were we?
Her bright colors livened up the joint, but what struck us, or at least me, more was how sincere her paintings felt. There was obvious suffering in them, feelings of abandonment and loneliness. [The bride left at the altar has even stayed in Fergal's mind.] She showed the ugliness of war and violence in contrasting bright, bold colors and short dabby marks.
Daniela and I exchanged numbers and shortly after her exhibit closed, she began sending me images of her work and asking me repeatedly to visit her. Finally, in mid-September, I had my one-year-control meeting with a doctor in the surgery department in the hospital in Livorno that operated on my spine. I had a couple of hours between the doctor visit and my physical therapy in Viareggio, so I met Daniela at her home. (Pisa is between the other two cities.)
Not far from the famous tower, we had a wonderful lunch of spaghetti alla carbonara. And afterwards she gave me a tour of her studio inside her home. Her work is extremely personal. Not just self-portraits, but really intimate glimpses into her psyche.
After seeing most of her paintings easily accessed, she then went to a small shelf and pulled out a case of ink drawings. They look a bit like etchings, but Daniela explained that they are all hand-drawn with ink. She showed me a series she has been working on of self-portraits. She says that once she has drawn the 100th one, she will be done. Daniela is on 80-something now.
She has other collections of this medium and I share one here. Her voice is clear and loud, and purely hers.
I also share with you here a couple of her felt and mixed media hats that she has made for various occasions. Such a creative mind. She is kind and very humble, too.
And I must say that I have rarely seen a studio of such large and colorful work that is so in order and clean! I could learn a lot from Daniela!
She says that she works on one artwork from start to finish. That is where we differ. I always have many projects in various stages of completion. I learned to do that in Texas, basing my activities on the weather and painting when times for stone carving were not optimum. Sometimes I just get stuck in a work and find that moving ahead on another one allows my brain to help me carry on with the first after gaining a fresh eye.
The next image below is a selfie I took with this gentle artist Daniela Maccheroni of Pisa. And yes, she gave me permission to publish my images of her and her artwork. Enjoy!
Thank you,
Kelly
P.S. Before I left, Daniela gave me a copy of her autobiography to read. Sadly, it is in Italian and over an inch thick! I spend too much time writing and reading on the computer or phone and thus, rarely read books anymore. When I do, I fall asleep right away after full days. But I have read the first several pages. In those, she starts off her story describing the hallucinations and probably confused mixed with actual facts of her young life as she wakes up after a coma of six days. I think she was 17 years old. Fergal wants me to share the "abandoned at the altar" story with him whenever I get there! Daniela would love to have a film made from her book for the Biennale in Venezia. I had better get reading!
More of Daniela's work:
