Biography
Gold & Persuasion
by Valentina Falcioni
“One must have a convicted and enlightened faith in order to be enlightening and convincing," said Pope John Paul II in 1978. Angela Latorre, hopes to live her life in such a way, and her paintings glimmer of gold and persuasion.
Born in Tivoli, RM, Italy, in 1982, Angela has cultivated an impressive inclination for art from a very early age, when she would spend hours observing the numerous paintings kept on the walls of her childhood home, imagining the lives of those stranded in the painted scenes before her.
She began to acquire an artistic taste at the Art Institute of Ascoli Piceno, specializing in the recognition and cataloging of cultural heritage; her technical and stylistic characteristics have developed over time through a long series of her own works.
She developed her ability to understand and access the innermost feelings (and a capacity to bring these feelings out on the canvas) along the aisles of a pediatric ward, where she worked as a nurse for several years. There she observed and absorbed the quietest, most devastating of pains: love rooted in the very being of the most desperate and adrift of parents. Yet there she also experienced the sweetest relief: found in the little smile of one coming out of a dark and trying time.
Angela has bathed herself in tears of anguish, consolation, and absolute joy. Brimming with emotion, she chooses to let every sentiment flow, unfiltered, from her hands and through her brush, in bright colors and a vibrant use of gold leaf. Through her paintings, she specifically recounts contemporary stories and fables, because, as the British author and philosopher Gilbert Keith Chesterton once wrote, it is through stories that one can "teach children that dragons can truly be beaten."
It is no coincidence that the fibers of Angela’s paintings are hinted with the scent of gold. This precious material – a substance not subject to oxidation – alludes to light, strength, and a determined spiritual evolution. In various traditions, gold has been used to ward off evil, and Angela Latorre and uses it as a shield; her enlightened and convicted faith the only thing she lets through.
