Hotel veteran chases dream to be a painter
For Philippe Caretti, quitting his job in December as a senior executive who helped run a top Hong Kong hotel means he now has the time to devote to his passion to be an artist.
The 60-year-old Swiss veteran in hospitality management, with more than 30 years of experience on the job, is clearly excited at the prospect of painting full time.
Caretti was originally destined to go into another creative field, architecture, but that didn’t work out.
“I studied architecture for one year in Geneva in 1979. But at that time there was a lot of unemployment in the field, because there were too many architects for such a small country,” Caretti recalled.
He said he made the pragmatic decision to study hotel management at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and then began working in hotels in Asia in 1981.
The hotel veteran has served as an executive for many reputable hospitality companies there, including the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts and Marco Polo Hotels.
Caretti said he worked hard as vice-president of Macro Polo Hotel in Hong Kong over the past four years, but he also found time to do a lot of painting at his leisure.
His creative passion has already brought him some measure of success and Caretti has held painting exhibitions in China, including in Hong Kong.
The latest is a solo exhibition at the Yang Gallery in Beijing’s 798 Art District. His show, called the Poetry of Colors, is inspired by Chinese culture. In it he has incorporated the Chinese philosophy of tian ren
he yi — oneness of man and nature — into his works.
The philosophy maintains the elements of heaven, earth and humanity, embracing a unity or partnership between man and nature, he said.
The artist has spent the last 24 years working in hotels in China and he said that this way of thinking was a constant theme that had run through his life here.
Caretti utilizes vibrant colors in his paintings to convey the concepts of happiness and freedom of expression.
“I think the word hospitality means jia (home in Chinese) — in that you have the sense of taking in your guests and making them feel at home,” he said.
Caretti said that nowadays people who have money, especially Chinese, are well educated and they don’t want to go to a hotel just to sleep but want a life experience.
“So I believe art and the hotel business blends very well,” he added.
Caretti has also applied artistic inspiration to his hotel work. “In every company where I worked, the owners gave me a lot of freedom when decorating the presidential suites and choosing artists for the hotel,” he said, adding that this was because they realized artists had an intimate knowledge of exquisite art.
The Swiss citizen said he once developed design concepts for the Nuo Hotel Beijing with Zeng Fanzhi, a noted contemporary Chinese painter.
“Success attracts success, I believe,” he said.
“I will continue painting and holding exhibitions in the future.”