Italian and Launceston artist Eleonora Pulcini opens EP Fine Arts Gallery

The Italian artist has opened a permanent gallery of her works in Launceston's Quadrant Mall for the people of her adopted home to experience.

EP Fine Art Gallery - "a dream realised," according to Pulcini - held its grand opening on Friday, August 11, and is filled with the artist's contrasting works of Tasmanian landscapes in darkness and light.

"Tasmania is the place I think I belong and a place I've been looking for that inspires me in a deep way," Pulcini said.

"It's beautiful, it has movement, it has the scariness and the awe of how small humans feel in nature - the sublime.

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"I want people to experience what I feel being here and to be inspired; that's what EP Fine Art Gallery is about."

Originally pursuing a scientific career in Rome, Pulcini moved to Australia to pursue a full-time artistic career ten years ago, living in Melbourne first before finding the Apple Isle.

Her paintings - often fantastical natural scenes with swirling skies akin to Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night - have sold in the thousands and been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.

Many of her newer works are oil paintings completed in Tasmania, and are part of a series depicting local places like Windermere, north of Launceston, Cataract Gorge, Deloraine and Bruny Island.

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"I take inspiration from places I've physically been," Pulcini said.

"I jump in the car, I drive and then I paint scenery on the road."

These Tasmanian pieces will travel to the Italian Parliament at the end of this year for a 20-painting exhibition, My Tasmania, which will be opened by Italy's undersecretary of culture, the art critic Vittoria Sgarbi.

Pulcini's EP Fine Art Gallery is home to many of these works as well as a rotating collection which she said is a place she hopes to inspire Tasmanians and discuss her art.

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"People unfortunately can't always afford to buy an original, but I still want to give them the chance to have a place to see them all the time," she said.

"The layout of the gallery is one trying to make people feel at home because I want people in front of these paintings.

"My job is to paint but yours is to find the story that belongs to you."

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