Biography

*Winner of the 2017 St. Botolph Club Emerging Artist Award and the Nellie Taft Grant for Outstanding Painting*
New Hampshire artist Christopher Volpe paints in oils and teaches year-round, both en plein air and in the studio. He approaches painting with a sense of the poetic, having previously earned a graduate degree in poetry from the University of New Hampshire. He turned to painting in 2007 for its immediate potential to express deeply embedded individual and universal experiences of reality. www.christophervolpe.com.
“I think that, for whatever unclear reasons, artists walk through this world burdened with a feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction with the conditions of human life as it's lived day to day. Then one day they encounter a great work of art (it could be a painting, a novel, a poem, a piano concerto…) and suddenly they fall in love with the idea that it is possible to improve those conditions - to elevate humanity above its habitually low level of consciousness by bringing into existence tangible manifestations of a full life, in fact the best of human thought and feeling. Something in this individual silently devotes itself to this ‘mission’ of accessing a deeper, more meaningful reality in themselves and bringing into existence objects and experiences (works of art) that make those states both evident and accessible to others. This project of living a more authentic life, of really seeing and thinking and feeling and wanting to share that through the practice of art, is what inspires great artists to create. All authentic art - that is, art that's honest, in which the artist has created from within without relying over much on the successes of his or her predecessors or contemporaries - has the beneficial effect of allowing people open to experiencing the art to awaken to their own untapped potential as thoughtful, feeling individuals.”
Volpe resides in Hollis, NH with his wife, Anna Birch, and their son, Max.