The 47th Annual ODU Literary Festival, which ran from Oct. 6 through 11, featured the work of 22 talented writers and artists. At 2 p.m. on Oct. 9, ODU English professor Manuela Mourao spoke at the opening of her exhibition at the Gordon and Ellin Art Gallery, titled “From The Heart.”
“From The Heart” features a collection of 8 multimedia paintings created by Mourao, inspired by the love letters of 18th and 19th century writers, with motifs taken from their literature. Mourao, a veteran professor at Old Dominion University and a specialist in Victorian literature and culture, has had her work featured in the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art.
At the opening of her exhibition, Mourao spoke about the themes that drove her to create this exhibition— both in her literary work and her personal life. She was first inspired to begin this project after the 30th anniversary of her marriage, upon reading the love letters she and her husband wrote to one another when they first fell in love.
Mourao then grew that idea to encompass her literary work— specifically, the love letters of famous writers. She emphasized the importance of love letters as a space where writers, often constrained by the conventions of their society, were able to freely express their strongest emotions.
The paintings varied widely in their color palettes, visual styles, and even materials used in their creation. Each painting’s particular style is meant to invoke some element of their corresponding literary work. Some paintings, like “Emily Dickinson’s Letters to Susan Gilbert,” were gentle and pale, awash in various tones of pink and beige. Dickinson, called the “Angel of Amherst,” was known to dress only in white, thus evoking the lighter tones and gentler style of the painting she inspired.
Others, like her painting “Love Letters,” inspired by her husband’s recent stroke, feature violent reds and capillary patterns. While all of Mourao’s paintings maintain their own distinct flair, they are immediately recognizable as being united by a single theme.
From start to finish, this exhibition took Mourao 8 years to complete, although the majority of the work took place in the last 5 years. Mourao’s artistic style is inspired by painters Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, and Peter Sachs.
