Raveling and Unraveling
An artistic journey with our partner Bill Papaleo through movement and light from the Hudson River Valley to Southern Italy
Opening Reception:
Friday, November 13, 2026 from 6pm-8pm
MOVE Cold Spring
37 Chestnut Street
Cold Spring, NY 10516
Show Dates: November 13, 2026 - March 12, 2027
About the Exhibition
The paintings presented follow my journey from the Hudson River and the Hudson River school, to my impressionist and classical training as an artist. They will take us to Italy and my southern Italian roots and then back to the metaphoric river of dance and movement which is really the inner calling of the soul, its natural state of joy and peace and and connection.
When I work from nature, for as long as as I can remember, I perceive an energy that resonates inside me to a point where I stop seeing objects and lose my sense of self. In the best of those moments, my work becomes effortless. I spent many years of study at the Art Students League and The Cape School which was in a direct line from Monet to William Merrit Chase to Charles Hawthorne and to my teacher, Henry Henche, too. He worked to simplify the techniques for students to perceive light in its natural range; that can’t be done in the indoor art schools. I continue these teaching concepts with awareness of contemporary sensitivities and aesthetics.
I am fortunate and grateful to have worked with writers and dancers, throughout a good part of my career. My mother, a modern dancer under Martha Graham and also a Dance Therapist, trained me to see movement when I paint. I admire writers because they understand how important it is to tell a story which reveals inner personal truths, ones that hopefully touch on a universal truth.
Painters can tell stories through feeling that words can’t always achieve. My father was a writer and poet who examined his personal experience as an Italian in America with a keen awareness of the difficulties. He explored how a materialistic culture, many times, does not respect roots and traditions. I have been working in Italy and traveling back and forth to America for 40 years. In doing so, I explore the folk traditions of dance represented here in the United States and inspired by ancient traditions of southern Italy.
Ravelling and unravelling refers to the moment we are in, historically speaking and, for me personally, where it seems all institutions, values, traditions, and nation states are headed. Michael Meade speaks of an ancient Native American myth where an old woman keeps sewing a beautiful dress only to be unraveled and destroyed each night by a wild dog. Each day she starts anew and creates an ever more beautiful dress only to be unravelled by the dog, again. This myth is a metaphor to understand that the world continually builds ,falls apart, rebuilds. When the old woman finishes the dress it would be perfect. A story of a dress, a story of a world.
Every day in my town of Vietri Sul Mare, I meet my fisherman friend who continually fixes his nets for the next day, only to be unraveled by the sea and the strains of fish and sea flow. In him I made the strange connection to the Native American myth . Art is always creating a world that must be reformed and begin again. My life moving through and living in my two countries has taught me this.
Bill Papaleo
RSVP Below
Opening Reception:
Friday, November 13, 2026 from 6pm-8pm