Robert Ferrandini is one of the most admired painters working in New England. For over twenty-five years he has been celebrated for his haunted and glorious landscapes, which incorporate imagery culled from art history, film, literature, and popular culture. In both urban and bucolic settings, Ferrandini has made work that communicates a prophetic forboding while simultaneously concocting voluptuous conceits that contend with masters in the history of landscape painting.

Since a 2001 stroke that deprived him of the use of his right hand, Ferrandini has painted with his left hand, primarily in watercolor, producing increasingly complex works, unpopulated invented landscapes and seascapes suffused with broad ranges of color, exuberant mark making, and a rapturous glorying in visual phenomena.

Writing in the October/November 2007 issue of Art New England, critic Alicia Faxon remarks, “These are all works made since Ferrandini’s catastrophic stroke in October 2001.  Deprived of the use of his right hand and arm, the artist continued drawing and painting with his left.  The results in this exhibition are sophisticated, brilliant, and magical.  It is as if the switch to the left released the dreamer and visionary the artist has become.  The paintings testify to struggle, perseverance, and mastery.”

Speaking in the gallery, Ferrandini accepted the characterization of his left-hand work as a fraternal twin of his previous work: the same DNA, a continuity of consciousness, but enacted and manifested differently.  “I know it isn’t as turbulent as it has been,” he said, “but it’s always been about splendor.”

In September, 2007, Ferrandini and fellow painter Gerry Bergstein were jointly given the St. Botolph Club Foundation’s 43rd Distinguished Artist Award.  First presented in 1963 to Edward Hopper, the prize “recognizes and supports artists who have demonstrated outstanding talent and an exceptional diversity of accomplishments.”

Ferrandini's work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Harvard University Art Museums, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, among others.