“Mr. Demolli defines his work as nostalgic paintings as they conjure up distant landscapes or moments in time.”  ( Gabriel Paul Stuart, National Museum of Murals and Mosaics.)

What is a nostalgic mural?

A nostalgic mural commemorates a place, a time period or an event from someone’s life.  It can be very personal or very public.  It depends on who connects to the mural as a special scene from their personal experience.  Some of my nostalgic murals have included villages or hometown landscapes, historic depictions of a community celebrating the fourth of July, a sailboat race and the fountain where a patron proposed to his wife.  What makes the mural nostalgic is how the art work is viewed or intended, rather than the subject matter.  A nostalgic mural conjures up distant landscapes or a moment in time that has deep meaning for the customer.  Many of the restaurants I have painted include at least one town where the owner lived.  They can point out the house where they lived or where they were born. 

Historic scenes can be educational, but if it is enhanced with people or flags or something intended to remind people of the ‘good old days’ then that mural is nostalgic.  It represents what people want to remember about their past. It can also be a tangible image of places that no longer exist. In the case of my twin towers mural, it is directly related to a terrible historic event but the mural combines a visual expression of what doesn’t exist and the emotion of what does exist in our memory.