Jerry Fresia

I grew up in western Massachusetts, in a working class neighborhood. All my grandparents were from Italy. I was the first in my family to go to college where I earned a degree in engineering. But that was definitely not me. It was the late 60s, the counter culture was in full force but I was on the outside looking in. I decided to go to grad school in political science and eventually received a PhD and taught at a few different schools. But again that didn't work for me either. As it turned out I had been studying painting steadily on the side so when I was 40, I dropped out of academia to try to make a living as an artist. I moved to San Francisco and began organizing artists so that we could have our own independent means of producing and distributing our work, directly to the public, via outdoor exhibitions in public spaces. It was the only way I could have made a living as a painter. In 2004, my wife, Conchitina, and I moved to Lake Como in Italy and that is where I am today, teaching painting through workshops.