Carlo Albucci is a Florentine painter of curious happenings. He paints ironic, iconic, surreal and comic events sometimes all together, sometimes one at a time. In all ways they are fun to look at and even more fun to figure out. These “events,” all oil paintings on masonite, are inventions of his rather elaborate and curious imagination, or maybe not. Only the viewer can decide. Anyway you look at them, they will leave you wondering, smiling and perhaps laughing at this crazy world he’s invented.

Albucci, born in 1947, is a well known antiques dealer who does the famous open air antique markets throughout Tuscany on almost every weekend of the year. He and his wife Anna travel to Arezzo, Lucca, Firenze, Siena, wherever there’s good weather and an open market.

He loves to paint and he’s wonderful at it. When he was in his mid-40's he won a grant to study at the Scuola di San Marco at the Academia in Florence. There he fine tuned his already natural talents and gained the confidence to paint from his heart, and that he does.

His scenes are rich in the fables and foibles of Italian culture and religion. Growing up in Florence it would be nearly impossible to not absorb the rich heritage of art, church and eccentricities within the daily life. That is only the tip of the iceberg for Albucci. He has taken the ordinary and stepped outside the box to show the other side of dogma, tradition and fantasy.

His paintings are rich and lyrical. They resonate with joy and his ability to laugh at oneself and everyone else too.

The Gold/Smith Gallery will be featuring oil paintings on board by Albucci from May 30 to June 30 at their new gallery located at 8 McKown Street (across from the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library) in Boothbay Harbor.

There will be an open house to celebrate the new exhibit and the new location of the gallery on Saturday, June 6 from 3 to 6 p.m.

Gold/Smith Gallery is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays noon to 5 p.m., and can be reached at 207-633-6252.