About the Artist

Charles John Tersolo II was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, in 1974. Charles graduated summa cum laude from the University of New Hampshire in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art. Inspired by the creative possibilities of the cityscape, he moved to Boston. In 2004, Charles was selected to join the Copley Society of Art, the nation's oldest non-profit art association. In 2009, the board of governors unanimously named Charles a Copley Artist.

Charles now lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, with a studio and gallery in the South End of Boston. He has been working exclusively as a fine art oil painter since 2003.

Painting Styles

City & Landscape

For Charles, architecture is personality. Colors, unique details, and intersecting forms demand the attention of his palette and brush. Many are painted directly from life, meditating on color and light that shifts with the passage of time. Years of painting outdoors, along with altering and projecting digital photography, have provided Charles the tools to paint locations all over the world with the same immediacy of his plein air works. Many extraordinary digital studies of Paris, New York City, Chicago, Florida, New England and the American Southwest await a commission to bring them to life in paint.

Around the world and in your backyard, there are buildings that are more than they need to be: they are giant outdoor sculpture. In detail, shape, complexity, materials, elegant proportion and the way they catch sun, they stop the eye and fire the imagination. Always in varying states of repair, these unique structures remind us that someone, somewhere, did more than they needed to. They tell us that perhaps we can also do more than we think we can.

Collectors may never experience these structures firsthand, at the exact moment they catch the sun just right. Charles works to recreate them on canvas in vibrant color and brushwork, allowing them to be enjoyed by patrons at the perfect moment, in the comfort of their homes. "As building construction can be one of the costliest endeavors, and details and materials can always be done more inexpensively, I hope these paintings encourage investment in both future inspiring structures, and care for ones already built."

Conceptual

Early cityscapes included writing on the backs of the canvas. A kind of journal entry, they document moments where everyday, cliché, common sense logic revealed themselves to Charles's "question authority" persona. "In 2001 I began moving written word to the front of my paintings. Conceptual and installation art was playful and engaging for me, but often huge or impractical for display in homes. My textual paintings provoke as much as museum pieces, but have a surface reading that is light and jumbled, explored only when one stops, stares at them, and seeks out their meaning." These paintings are livable, decorative, and often minimal in range of color or tonal values. They employ encrypted and conjugated proverbs, combined with images of popular art, to expose the virtues of living deliberately and gaining the style of others.

Abstract

"In 2003 I began my own abstract pieces. Rather than working from an idea, emotion, or experience, my abstract paintings are pure expression of color and shape." These works are created with traditional painting method, using thin paint layers at first, applying shapes and colors and allowing them to dry. Successive layers of paint are applied, the colors and shapes respond to early ones and grow, like a city. Some colors are preserved until the end, while others get covered or altered. Glazing with transparent layering of color, or semi-transparent frotties including some white, are traditional oil techniques that allows harmonizing when applied to the whole canvas. "The finesse and expressive qualities of my pure abstracts grow with my other styles, informing each other."

Unique Works

These paintings are those that fit into the category of not fitting into a category. They are also works that remain available from previously-completed painting series. This label allows growth and exploration of singular ideas outside the context of a larger body of work.

Selected Exhibitions

    SOLO
  • 2001: Infinity Gallery, South End of Boston
  • 2002-2003: Gallery at South End Realty
  • 2004: Prudential Gallery, Boston
  • 2005: Copley Society of Art, Boston
  • 2005: Grotto Restaurant, Beacon Hill, Boston
  • 2008: Revoution Fitness Gallery, Boston
  • 2008: Urban Living Studio Gallery Boston
  • 2009: Newton Free Library, Newton
    GROUP
  • 1998-2001: Infinity Gallery, Boston
  • 1998-Present: Out of the Blue Art Gallery, Cambridge
  • 2003: Art Showcase, SoHo, New York City
  • 2003-2004: New Art on Newbury, Boston
  • 2003-2004: Provincetown Art Association, Provincetown
  • 2003-Present: Thanassi Gallery, Provincetown
  • 2004-Present: 450 Harrison Avenue Studios, Boston
  • 2004-Present: Copley Society of Art, Boston
  • 2006-Present: Artmosphere Gallery, Boston
  • 2008-Present: 13 Forest Gallery, Arlington


Artist Statement

While in New York photographing future paintings, I became familiar with 19th century beaux-arts architecture. These buildings are festooned with carved stonework detail from Baroque and Classical architecture. Beaux-arts fell out of fashion, and the irony of beauty becoming passé stayed with me. While painting Boston en plein air, I focused on the mixing of building styles that freely overlap in the oddly-angled streets. I listened to people tell me how tired they were of traditional paintings of Copley Square and the Public Garden. I was challenged to use light, color, perspective, and modern ideas about composing and constructing a painting, to will these subjects to life and make them relevant and timeless.

While many large city structures are unremarkable, the best of them catch light and carve it into color. The greatest buildings combine perfect proportions and lively architectural detail in engaging ways. They astound the mind with dreams of sculpting stone, organizing workforce, envisioning results, where simply housing a function was required. They envelop people, suggesting to them that they too can be more than they have to be. Great buildings are comfortable with themselves, beautifully juxtaposing modern structures or sitting pretty with their gilded-age contemporaries. In the right light, grand buildings and monuments become more than just historical, fanciful or pretty. Battling mediocrity, they fight the notion that things cannot be done.

My technique is influenced by Italian sculptor Giacometti. He painted people in black and white, sculpting a likeness, then wiped it to gray ground, retaining some drawing. I paint the colors and tones of my image roughly, let them dry, then use transparent color glaze over parts or all of the canvas, in bright color such as cobalt blue or cadmium red. This transforms the underlying brushwork, making some strokes saturated while dulling others, forcing me to repaint them with fresh perspective, allowing me to search for colors and light. Mixing modern composition and direct painting with traditional techniques such as glazing and frotties, I make paintings that feature the transient qualities of architecture inhabiting them, changing style or mood depending on how they are framed.