Working at a feverish pace, a Winston-Salem artist with Wilmington roots provided the vision for the newly-reopened Blockade Runner Beach Resort.
Angelina Taddeucci, a self-taught artists who has been painting for nearly two decades, painted several pieces for the hotel, which reopened last weekend after being closed since September’s Hurricane Florence. She’s developed a name for herself through painting murals, portraits, fine art and book illustrations.
For the Blockade Runner, she painted two 40-foot murals in the hotel’s dining area, one adorned with banana leaves and other with flowing swirls of coral.
Visitors coming to the hotel will simply have to look down, as she painted an extensive mural on the lobby invoking coral reefs. She also painted 12 pieces, sized 6 feet by 2 feet, that will line the hallway of the third floor.
It usually takes a month to complete just one six-foot painting, she said. But working day and night since late January, Taddeucci completed the whole project in less than one month.
“I’m so happy about how things turned out,” she said. “What I’ve done in less than a month is unheard of.”
Taddeucci said she got direction from the hotel’s interior designer, Terry Allred, who gave her some conceptual photos to examine. From there, she did the rest.
“I just go with it,” she said, “How it turns out depends on how I feel when I’m painting. It never looks like the reference photo.”
Taddeucci’s work has become familiar to many in the Triad area, including Forsyth Hospital’s Ronald McDonald House, the Forsyth Academy and the Children’s Museum of Winston-Salem.
Now, she wants her work at the Blockade Runner to propel her into being selected for an art project for the Piedmont Triad International Airport.
“It’s huge,” she said. “My next hopeful goal is to get that. I have great hopes for the new project.”
