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Sicilian Culture: News & Views
A Painter Reconnects to Family Heritage
in Italy & Sicily
By Kathleen Gwinnett
My parents had very little interest in seeing Italy. Their parents came to New York City at the turn of the century. They settled in New York City.
Since I was a young girl, I always dreamed of traveling to Europe, but it was not until I reached my 50th birthday and experienced my bout with breast cancer that I had the determination, finally, to travel there. In 1991, I (visited) Florence, Venice and the Italian Riviera. I was enchanted with the culture of Italy, and the beauty of its land and its people. Although I had studied Italian art in my art history classes (at Parsons School of Design, New York City), I didn't realize how the antiquity of the country would envelop me. There was so much I wanted to capture in my watercolor paintings.
I began studying Italian language tapes and listening to Italian music on my return from that first trip. I hadn't realized how much Italian vocabulary I knew from listening to my grandparents. Finally, in 1998, I convinced my husband to take me to Italy: this time, with the goal of reaching Sicily and the places where my grandparents originated...
My father had told me that my grandfather went to the market every morning to sell his butchered meat. I can only guess this is the old Vucciria, close to San Domenico church. I was really excited to visit this market on my last trip to Palermo, and of course, I painted a scene from it... I painted my grandmother's house in Belmonte Mezzagno. The painting can be found on my web site. The web site also displays paintings from my maternal family's town of origin, Resuttano in the Madonie Mountains...
Arriving back in America, I continued to paint the Italian and Sicilian locations I had photographed. For the first time in my painting career, I felt so attached to my original paintings; I decided to keep them, and make prints for sale. I subsequently created a website to display and sell my paintings and prints, and also to relate my travel experiences and my connecting with my Sicilian family history...
The images of her paintings and accounts of her travels at her WWW sites:
www.geocities.com/nccaterina
www.geocities.com/gwinnettcf
Required Reading for
Italian-Americans...
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