Donald Farnsworth, The Parma Portraits, Boca Raton Museum of Art

The Parma Portraits - by Donald Farnsworth

ISBN 9781736846919
PDF copy: https://www.magnoliapaper.com/s/parmaportraitsv4.pdf

By: Guy Diehl

Currently on view at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida, The Parma Portraits presents a series of emotive portrait drawings by Donald Farnsworth, created in tribute to the hospital staff nurses and doctors at Maggiore Hospital in Parma, Italy, who cared for him during a critical period of illness where he nearly lost his life. The exhibition is a dedication to those whose care and presence went beyond duty, providing the human connection that shaped his healing.

Laura, Physician, 2023

Over the two years of making The Parma Portraits, Farnsworth refined a technique that balances classical precision with personal immediacy. Working in a hospital room in Parma during the winter of 2022, he relied on the shifting natural light from the bank of windows on the wall opposite the door while studying the nuances of each sitter’s face and pose. He coupled these character studies with his ongoing seven-year pursuit of recreating Renaissance paper. Farnsworth experimented with graphite and quarried sanguine red chalk alongside an array of pastels, pencils, and chalks, manipulating photographic references through digital solarization to heighten the play of light and shadow. Each portrait became an act of learning and refinement, where the surface, the medium, and the circumstances of making were inseparably bound to the expressions of gratitude and care embedded in the series.

Era Farnsworth, Donald's wife.

The personal drama that culminated in this series of drawings began in 2022, while traveling in Italy with his wife, Era, and close friends, Farnsworth suffered an unexpected near-death event that left him temporarily immobilized. He was admitted to Maggiore Hospital in Parma, where he endured five weeks of testing, treatment, and uncertainty before doctors identified his illness as a Covid-induced autoimmune disorder known as cold agglutinin disease. As he came to terms with his prognosis, Farnsworth decided that if he survived, he would find a way to document the experience.

Corina, Nurse, 2023

With a visual thinker’s instinct, Farnsworth began photographing everyone who helped him: his wife, doctors, nurses, orderlies, and even fellow patients. These images later became the source material for the drawings now on view. After returning home to the San Francisco Bay Area, he began creating portraits on handmade linen/hemp paper developed at Magnolia Editions, a fine art studio and print shop he founded in 1981, in Oakland, California. Using colored pencil, chalk, and graphite, Farnsworth completed more than 30 portraits, accompanied by a published book recounting his story.

Angelo, Nursing orderly and aide, 2023

The drawings are a heartfelt tribute to the Italian physicians and staff who combined scientific skill with compassion to save his life. More than likenesses, they embody gratitude, transforming personal recovery into shared recognition. Farnsworth includes a self-portrait that reflects his own awareness during recovery, situating himself within the community of caregivers.

Portraiture historically has served to memorialize the living and the dead, to express power, status, and lineage, and to preserve identity for future generations. Farnsworth extends this tradition, using portraiture as a vessel of gratitude. His work demonstrates that contemporary portraiture need not serve the elite alone—it can honor everyday acts of care and courage.

Arianna, Infectious disease specialist, 2022

A key feature of the exhibition is the handmade paper itself. Farnsworth has spent the last decade researching Renaissance methods to replicate the linen and hemp papers used by artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Hans Holbein the Younger. Each sheet is made from linen rags and hemp fibers, then immersed in a dilute solution of hot gelatin hide glue. During papermaking, the sheets are pressed between coarse woolen felts, giving them qualities unmatched by any commercially available paper. Their texture, marked with the imprint of the felts, guides the drawing process—strong enough to withstand heavy erasure, yet sensitive enough to register the lightest touch.

Federica, Physician, 2023

  In Farnsworth’s hands, the surface becomes part of the viewing experience, linking his practice to the materials of the Renaissance while remaining firmly contemporary. He reflects on this process in his 2024 book The Parma Portraits, which collects all the drawings in the series, and from which the following statement is drawn:

“I approached these portraits carefully, concisely, methodically, as I imagine an architect might: wanting the sitter’s character to come forward through my hand in collaboration with the paper. Rediscovering and recreating the papers of the Renaissance was challenging and rewarding. This sixteenth-century-style paper inserted its presence in these portraits; the coarse, hair-marked tooth informed my pencil, interrupted my intention, and initiated the reworking of many passages. Five hundred years earlier, this kind of paper imbued every stroke of Old Master drawings with a unique texture.”

Claudia, Infectious Disease Specialist, 2023

Ultimately, The Parma Portraits exhibition, as well as the book published by Magnolia Editions, is a testament to resilience, care, and gratitude. Farnsworth transforms a life-threatening experience into an artistic journey, offering viewers a glimpse of how inspiration, skill, and necessity converge. His portraits remind us that art can be both deeply personal and universally resonant.

The exhibition runs through October 12, 2025, at the Boca Raton Museum of Art.