/ WORK AVAILABLE BY
Dolores Chiappone
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Born in 1931 in Rochester, New York and raised in Los Angeles, Dolores Chiappone painted as a child. When her father taught his young daughter to restore wood furniture, she began decorating them with paintings. Thrilled by these acts of creating, she knew she wanted to be an artist. Since that moment, Chiappone’s personality, talents and life as a professional artist have been shaped by her rich imagination, unique inner vision, wide travels, multi-cultural experiences and complete commitment to her craft.
When circumstances prevented Chiappone from attending art school and college, she absorbed art training through reading and studying paintings in books. She continues drawing inspiration from such diverse sources as Medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch; pre-Columbian art; late Renaissance artist Francois Boucher’s decorative allegories; 18th century classical Realists and animaliers; Rousseau’s powerful primitivism; Magritte’s surreal fantasies; and the 16th century Italian painter Caravaggio with his dramatic use of lighting and keen observation of both physical and emotional states.
Though described by reviewers as “mythological surrealism” or “magical realism,” Chiappone’s most recent body of work defies classification. It is a category unto itself, evolved from a highly personal style that she calls “mindscapes, or lyrical realism, in so far as ‘feeling’ takes precedent over ‘intellect.’ If a painting doesn’t make a sound to me—the sound of being moved, the sound of joy--then it isn’t finished.”
It was in Mexico, where Chiappone lived from 1960 to 1978, that her work fully blossomed. Moving from Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta to Tlaquepaque, she sought the time and space to create in various mediums, from miniature size to murals. Her work began to sing of a place where spirit converges with the physical plane—an inner world where the tangible merges with subjective, dream-like folk tales of the soul.
Says Chiappone, “My painting has always been an intellectual journey. I paint things that are both symbolic and real. It’s very shamanistic, moving back and forth between dimensions. I don’t see realms as being separated. I have painted many still lifes, but I’ve never set up a still life to paint. Likewise, I don’t paint or sketch outdoors. Instead, I go outdoors, walk, observe deeply, and feel the trees. Then I come back to the studio and paint the trees.”
︎ Inquire
Born in 1931 in Rochester, New York and raised in Los Angeles, Dolores Chiappone painted as a child. When her father taught his young daughter to restore wood furniture, she began decorating them with paintings. Thrilled by these acts of creating, she knew she wanted to be an artist. Since that moment, Chiappone’s personality, talents and life as a professional artist have been shaped by her rich imagination, unique inner vision, wide travels, multi-cultural experiences and complete commitment to her craft.
When circumstances prevented Chiappone from attending art school and college, she absorbed art training through reading and studying paintings in books. She continues drawing inspiration from such diverse sources as Medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch; pre-Columbian art; late Renaissance artist Francois Boucher’s decorative allegories; 18th century classical Realists and animaliers; Rousseau’s powerful primitivism; Magritte’s surreal fantasies; and the 16th century Italian painter Caravaggio with his dramatic use of lighting and keen observation of both physical and emotional states.
Though described by reviewers as “mythological surrealism” or “magical realism,” Chiappone’s most recent body of work defies classification. It is a category unto itself, evolved from a highly personal style that she calls “mindscapes, or lyrical realism, in so far as ‘feeling’ takes precedent over ‘intellect.’ If a painting doesn’t make a sound to me—the sound of being moved, the sound of joy--then it isn’t finished.”
It was in Mexico, where Chiappone lived from 1960 to 1978, that her work fully blossomed. Moving from Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta to Tlaquepaque, she sought the time and space to create in various mediums, from miniature size to murals. Her work began to sing of a place where spirit converges with the physical plane—an inner world where the tangible merges with subjective, dream-like folk tales of the soul.
Says Chiappone, “My painting has always been an intellectual journey. I paint things that are both symbolic and real. It’s very shamanistic, moving back and forth between dimensions. I don’t see realms as being separated. I have painted many still lifes, but I’ve never set up a still life to paint. Likewise, I don’t paint or sketch outdoors. Instead, I go outdoors, walk, observe deeply, and feel the trees. Then I come back to the studio and paint the trees.”