Thanks to Professor Emeritus James Mancuso

Parco Nazionale di Abruzzo (two hours east of Rome, more than 100,000 acres),  and the Adirondack State Park (6 million acres) have a partnership in which they exchange artists in residence.

Paul Bray sparked the association, and is now in the process of fostering a similar relationship between Hudson River Greenway, a park in the Po Valley.

What a nice type of project to foster relations between Americans and Italy, especially for those of Italian ancestry!
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ITALIAN ARTISTS EXPLORE ADIRONDACK VISTAS

Albany Times-Union
By Timothy Cahill, Staff writer
Sunday, August 24, 2003
 

BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE -- Italian wildlife artists Concetta Flore and Stefano Maugeri decided to walk the mile of Route 30 from the Adirondack Museum to the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts to show a visitor the exhibit of their paintings there. It was Sunday afternoon, when weekend traffic transforms the normally lightly traveled state route into a rumbling thoroughfare.

The artists are in Blue Mountain Lake until Aug. 26 as artists-in-residence at the museum and arts center. Since arriving in the Adirondacks, Flore and Maugeri have spent their days exploring the mountain landscape. Walking with them on the berm between the highway and the lake was an opportunity to see the familiar through their observant, enthusiastic eyes.

"You find places like this in Italy, but they're not so large," Flore said. She and Maugeri are here through an informal partnership between the Adirondack Park and the Italian National Park of Abruzzo, two hours west of Rome. At more than 100,000 acres, Abruzzo is large by European standards, but is dwarfed by the 6 million acres of the Adirondack preserve.

"The forest here extends for miles and miles and miles," Flore declared in crisp Anglican English. She is fluent in English, and acted as the voice of the pair.

Both artists are based in Rome. Flore, 40, is an active environmentalist who works closely with the World Wildlife Fund as an illustrator, raising awareness of endangered species and environmental crises through posters, pamphlets and learning guides. Her private art, in contrast, includes lyrical studies of plants, wildfowl and butterflies, and serene, almost dreamlike landscapes.

The 50-year-old Maugeri is one of Europe's leading zoological illustrators and wildlife artists. He is art director at the Abruzzo National Park and chairman of the Italian Society of Nature Art, and has worked with Jane Goodall to raise money for her work with primates in Africa. His paintings make you feel like you just woke up in the middle of a wilderness alive with the sights and sounds of proliferating nature.

Active respect

The sights and sounds of the road were RVs and SUVs sweeping past on the left, but Flore seemed not to notice as she intently described European standards of wildlife art. European artists seek not simply to inspire understanding and admiration for the natural world, she said, but to engender an active respect.

"You convey your emotions in meeting nature close at hand, and your knowledge," she said. "It's about being interested in every aspect of nature, all the plants, the smaller animals, reptiles.

"She repeated what she'd just said in Italian to Maugeri. "Si, si," said the older artist, nodding his assent. Up ahead, a white-tailed deer bounded across the road.

"Ah, there. We've seen a lot of deer," Flore said. "But we're waiting to see a black bear. And in a few days someone has promised to take us into the woods to see some beaver and loons up close.

"A swarm of Harleys roared up from behind and rounded a curve. Their receding thunder left a hole of silence.

"The birdsong is completely different here," Flore said. "The crows have a more high-pitched tone than crows in Italy. And we heard some birds this morning whose voices sounded almost tropical.

"To the right, separated by a guardrail, was a heavily wooded ravine.

"There is an incredible variety of fungi and mushrooms here," said Flore. In the deep shade of the woods, a mushroom glimmered orange.

"And the variety of tree leaves is very, very striking." The pointed stars of maples, the lobes of oaks, saw-edged fans of beech came into focus.

We saw some ptarmigans this morning," she went on, describing the pleasure of seeing a new species, the brownish alpine grouse. "Spruce ptarmigans."

In the exhibit

At the arts center, some 60 paintings are displayed in a large gallery-cum-auditorium.

Maugeri's wilderness tableaux are rich in detail, and marked by their striking drama. "There's always something happening in Stefano's work, a dynamic," Flore said. In one, a giant horned beetle looks like he's about to assault the viewer as a bright bird glides overhead and a green snake hunts in the treetops. In another, placid mountain apes seem oblivious to the herd of elephants breaking out of the trees in the background.

"I've got a need to describe everything," Maugeri said of the minute description in his scenes. "Sometimes it takes over."

"Men love knowing about things," Flore said. The field of wildlife art is crowded with men, she said, and many of them have backgrounds as naturalists, zoologists, biologists. "They have a scientific attitude toward nature as well as an aesthetic attitude."

"I feel more free," she said of her work, which is more painterly in its brushstroke and more fanciful in its colors. "I'm much more ignorant about things, but that gives me much more freedom.

"She gestured toward a landscape scene of a secluded marsh. Ducks floated on the surface of the windblown water. "I never have the animals as protagonists. The structure of the whole context interests me more. Plants have the same dignity for me (as animals). You can get acquainted with them, sit in front of them for hours.

"I'm more contemplative," she said. "I like looking at something that doesn't need me to survive, doesn't need me or want me. That's why I can only contemplate it.

"With the paintings, Flore has included quotations by writers and environmentalists, including one by Gandhi disciple Lanza del Vasto: "Do you reckon you can squash this worm? There: it wasn't difficult. Well. Now, make another one."

Prehistoric forebears

Among their influences, both Flore and Maugeri name the Neolithic artists who painted on cave walls in Lascaux, Altamira and other sites. One rarely hears American wildlife artists speak of these prehistoric forebears, but to Flore and Maugeri a kinship stretches over the millennia.

Maugeri feels their presence palpably. "I admire the proximity of nature the paintings convey," he said. "If 'primitive' means 'close to nature,' then I'm a primitive man.

"His comment amplified something he had said earlier: "I need to feel I'm at one with nature. Observation of other living creatures makes me more aware of myself as a living creature.

"What was long ago expressed in Lascaux persists in the work of these two Italians. All wildlife artists start out as observers of nature but end up its partners.

Concetta Flore and Stefano Maugeri will give a free lecture at the Adirondack Park Agency Visitor Interpretive Center in Paul Smiths at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 27. For information, call 327-3000. The exhibit of their paintings is on view through Sept. 26 in Blue Mountain Lake at the Adirondack Lake Center for the Arts. 352-7715.