“For me, portraiture can be summed up in the question, ‘What are you thinking now that you are safely on the canvas?’ That’s how our dialog is sparked and grows,” says US artist Victoria Slichter. “It’s the reason I fall in love with the person, once they are inside the portrait.” A businessperson turned painter post-retirement, Victoria Slichter produces small-scale watercolors and oils. The Oltrarno Gaze – a series of 25 works and counting – is a 2020 exhibition and a tribute to her adoptive neighborhood.

 

The artist’s nutshell descriptions of the people in her portraits provide a window onto Florence’s Oltrarno district and its diversity: “Paola is a schoolteacher who has not let her autoimmune disease take over her life. Sister Vera is a Franciscan missionary whose working community is kitty-corner to Santa Maria del Carmine. Concetta, an 85-year-old shopkeeper, says that, ‘to be a good widow, you have to keep busy’. Moutalla, a 20-year-old beggar from Senegal manages to live on 8 euro a day. Mohammad, an extremely well educated man from Afghanistan works at Happy Shopping. Anna is a shoemaker who helps her son in an atelier near via Santo Spirito.” One-sentence stories to capture the experience behind portrait. “I find most people say ‘yes’ to portraiture. I paint and listen to their stories. And what they don’t say, I read in their face,” Slichter says about her work.

 

Project partners:

Associazione Culturale il Palmerino and Advancing Women Artists

Firenze Municipality - Feel Florence

 

We extend heartfelt thanks to donors

Donna Malin, Alice Vogler and Margaret MacKinnon 

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