Traeger Di Pietro: Martha's Vineyard-based painter and visual artist

Artists Bloom in Winter

By Karla Araujo
mvtimes
February 04, 2010

For many, summer is a whirlwind of work, gallery openings, visitors, and general chaos. It's fun, they say, but exhausting. Winter - with its often-bleak weather and accompanying solitude - can be viewed as either the reward for surviving the summer frenzy or as the downside of living on a remote New England island.

"I love it," says Traeger di Pietro, an emerging artist whose work is shown at Dragonfly Gallery and PIKNIK Art & Apparel in Oak Bluffs. With two distinctly different bodies of work - his landscapes and still life paintings represented by Dragonfly, his more abstract mixed media pieces and urban scenes by PIKNIK - Mr. di Pietro views winter as an opportunity to embrace seclusion.

"I appreciate the loneliness," he explains. "You truly get to grasp onto what's going on in your life. The city would be too stimulating. I'd always be out looking for ideas. Here, ideas find me."

A native of Swampscott, he has lived on the Island full-time since 2000 and had his first gallery show five years ago. He finds that the serenity of winter enhances his productivity and his enjoyment of friends and travel. "Living here in the winter makes me appreciate my friends and the community, and the city, too, when I get a chance to visit it."

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