My professional career began as a typographer, moving on to becoming a designer, photographer, retoucher, then digital image editor. I owned and managed Paul Baldassini Graphic Design for over 25 years in Boston’s Back Bay where I worked with a creative team of graphic arts professionals providing design, production, advertising and marketing services to a diverse range of clients including corporate, private and non-profit organizations.

During that time I continued to paint, when I was able to, for many years in watercolor only, later transitioning to oils. Having had some traditional training including college and workshops, I consider myself a self-taught painter due to total immersion into a highly self-motivated learning process outside the realm of formal instruction. This includes a dedicated study of old and modern master painters, combined with an expansive knowledge of their painting materials and techniques. I create compositions using digital tools and then create paintings using conventional techniques that are very similar to that of the old masters — some drawing, raw umber monochromatic underpainting, wipe out where necessary, direct overpainting, some glazing and scumbling and the use of special mediums.

My aim in painting floral compositions is to record something that I observed in nature that was fleeting but revelatory.  To generate source material for paintings I use digital technology to examine and edit, larger than life, the flowers I photograph. The outcome expresses a carefully considered cropping and viewpoint, which is often based on a composite of several reference images. Like much great art, my paintings are a combination of fact and fiction, hard work and technical competence.