Upon retirement, artist taps into his fertile imagination
Rosario Barrasso's East Boston triple-decker looks like the rest of the houses lined up side by side along a gray concrete sidewalk bereft of even a single tree. Step inside, however, and enter the lush landscapes of the 87-year-old artist's imagination.
Oil paintings hang on the walls of the second-floor apartment turned art gallery, depicting mountain valleys swaddled in fog, sunsets and sunrises, and silver-blue lakes lit by luminous skies. There are also seascapes commandeered by tall ships, lighthouses, and seagulls in flight.
''It all comes out of my head. I don't copy," said Barrasso, a lifelong Eastie resident who returned to his youthful passion for art after retiring from a factory job about a quarter-century ago.
''Sometimes you've got nothing in mind. But you start and before you know it you're moving," said Barrasso, who taught himself oil painting after he ran out of home improvement projects a few years into his retirement. His wife, Josephine, with whom he celebrated 41 years of marriage last month, said painting seems to transport him to another place.
''He'll be painting," she said. ''I'll come in from outside and he doesn't even know it. He gets so involved in his paintings, he's someplace else."
''You have to think of your next move," her husband responded with a smile.
Barrasso graduated from East Boston High School in 1936 with a scholarship in art, and dreamed of going into advertising. But the award money wasn't enough to pay for college tuition.
''So I had to give it up and go to work. In those days if you had a nickel in your pocket you were lucky," said Barrasso, who toiled at a chocolate factory, a stone mill, a tin can factory, and for a defense contractor in Eastie's Day Square before retiring in 1980.
Several White Mountains scenes were inspired by the views in Northwood, N.H., where the couple had a summer home until recently. But he likes to take certain liberties. ''I'll see a scene but I'll change it as I go along," Barrasso explained. ''I'll decide to take that tree there and put it here. And it keeps shifting."
Over the years, Barrasso has sold a few works and given others away to his son, grandchildren, other relatives, and friends.
East Boston Central Catholic School kindergarten teacher Dana DelPrato commissioned a pair of lighthouse scenes for her kitchen. She said she discovered Barrasso's talent while visiting their home. DelPrato had assisted Josephine Barrasso, a long-time Central Catholic kindergarten teacher.
''His easel would be set up" whenever she dropped by for coffee, DelPrato said.
Until his wife retired in 2002, Barrasso was a familiar figure at the school. Each year, he would decorate his wife's classroom based on a different children's character or theme.
With dozens of paintings piling up and more on the way, Barrasso opened the vacant apartment at his Paris Street home as an art gallery in September.
The apartment had been vacant for eight years, since his brother Antonio died. It has now been transformed by rows of paintings neatly hung on the living room walls.
More recently finished canvasses, meanwhile, lean against walls in other rooms.
While age and illness have slowed him down a bit in recent years, he said he paints an hour a day three or four days a week.
''Before, it took me three hours to paint a rough picture. Now it takes three or four days," he said. ''It makes me forget my ailments."
The gallery is open by appointment Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For an appointment or more information, call Barrasso at 617-567-1858. 