The exhibition marks Welch’s first solo show in Italy. It combines a collection of narrative paintings that navigate the fragile threshold between perception, love, wonder, and also sublime anxiety.
At the heart of Shiver is an exploration of liminality—the eerie, fragile space between presence and absence, knowing and unknowing. Welch’s paintings capture the tension of fleeting encounters, dreamlike landscapes, and personal mythologies. References to literature, cinema, and New England and Balkan folklore are woven together through recurring imagery of night walks, spectral figures, shifting skies, and the quiet, guiding presence of birds. Even the cyanotype skeleton of each painting shifts in and out of that which can be named, the paint interacting with the sun-exposed surface in a shiver of recognition that vanishes as quickly as it appears.

Welch’s practice is rooted in the interplay of light, color, and storytelling. Each painting in Shiver unfolds like a cinematic fragment ala David Lynch, where diaristic narratives coalesce into hauntingly atmospheric compositions. From the rippling, unstructured night of Red Walker to the mythological personified illness of Vrykolakas, Welch’s imagery invites viewers to lean into existential uncertainty and feel held in the vulnerability of not knowing.