Christopher Volpe
Christopher Volpe is an artist, writer, and teacher living in New Hampshire. His paintings often combine oil paint with unusual materials such as tar, ash, salt, earth, rust, and gold leaf for their poetic and political overtones. His work is shown internationally and held in the permanent collections of Smith College, New England College, the Whistler House Museum, the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Grants and awards include the MassMoCA/Assets for Artists, the NH State Council on the Arts, and the Saint Botolph Club Foundation.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
Art is just an attempt to create meaning, in both your own life and the lives of people in the world who can connect with it.
What keeps me coming back to the easel is a perpetual unrest and an urge to be part of the collective search for meaning and satisfaction. It’s the same impulse I have as a writer and as a teacher – an attempt to make some sense of what’s going on and figure out what’s important
before we die.
The paintings I love and aspire to create turn the pain and confusion of being human into a kind of beauty that doesn’t deny the darkness or sugarcoat reality, yet insists on a lyrical engagement, not just with the world around us, but with the deeper mysteries of the human heart.
