Concerning drawing practice, I have
been told I was absolutely terrible at art back in kindergarten, I apparently
drew the worst trees ever!
I have never attended any drawing course in my life: my education revolves around medical subjects, but I am very observing and I did have a very good art teacher in elementary school. She taught me and the other kids the very first basis of color theory. I like to think she was the one who put the seeds of the passion for illustration inside of me. Those kept very silent (if we don’t count some meaningless doodling or improvised caricature of professors. Who didn’t do that at school?) until 2009, when almost by chance, I made a portrait for a friend’s birthday. I haven’t stopped since then!
What is your goal as an artist and
what do you want to convey to your viewers?
What I have been focusing on lately, is the “hide and seek” condition we all live in, which forces us to choose between showing ourselves through [communication], and keeping undisclosed and hidden what we really nurture inside. Sometimes this situation “short-circuits” so we get stuck in a desperate desire of opening ourselves up and, at the very same time, that to go unnoticed and protect our true fragile identity. Which can be anyway one and a million. This controversy I experience, too, is my main “food for thought” and source of inspiration, which I need to share hoping to leave my viewers with at least some curiosity, if not emphatic understanding.
Art is to me a preferential channel of communication.
The ladies I represent as see-through Chinese boxes”, are complex human beings whose inner emotions and thoughts “leak out”. However, they are never barely exposed. They always remain slightly concealed , that is why the figure is “corrupted” by abstract elements and intersections. In other words, I peel off masks of layers more or less deeply to give a glimpse of what lays behind. Just a glimpse.
I can be inspired almost by everything: people (patients I see in hospital too), faces, thoughts, books, music, photography and so on. All these situations can trigger an idea, a visually shaped thought that forms itself into my mind. After I decided that the idea I came up with is not-that-stupid or not-that-unattainable-for-my-skills, I give it a go. I look for some references through the internet that could match the concept I want to represent. I would use myself (changing features) as a reference too, but I am a truly awful photographer(and model).
It takes quite some time to compose overlapping layered images on paper, I must avoid the bunch of lines to come across as confused and messy. I always try hard to give my illustrations a neatly complicated, non-klutzy quality. Thus I must pay extra attention from the start! I have to admit that the several attempts are the most boring part of the whole process.
Who has been your biggest inspiration
in life who has influenced your art?
Oh, I have so many artists I look up to! I can’t mention you just one influence, I am hungry when it comes to learning new things and discovering artworks and artists I have never heard of before, both well-known and emerging. In general, I am inspired by the old Italian classics and also by medical illustrated books (e.g. Netter) for their incredible attention to anatomic details. But I do love contemporary art too, for example, works by Alyssa Monks and Marco Mazzoni.
I am strongly influenced by literature too, I am so very proud to be such a bookworm. I firmly believe that reading is one of the most mind-opening activities there is. One of my all time favourites is Dostoevski. His novels are basically the origin of my interest in people and in the inner world.
Photography and cinema are one big source of inspiration too, in short, the concept of the overlapping layered technique I am developing comes from observation of double-exposure pictures and slow-fade sequences in movie scenes.
More personally, I am influenced by my father, who passed on to me his love for literature and his rather melancholic sensitivity and by my mother, who instead passed on to me her love for music. I couldn’t survive one day without Radiohead and The Smiths!
How would you define beauty and wisdom?
Beauty is to me a complex, faceted, sometimes paradoxical and [a]non-canonizable concept.
It may sound prosaic, but I do
believe that we can find it absolutely anywhere, including the most hidden,
coldest and apparently filthiest corner of the world or of our soul. Considering beauty as an indefinable,
rather abstract idea, the whole difference is made by the eye of the beholder.
Meaning everyone’s sensitivity and capability to recognize it: beauty is always
there, heedless, sometimes well disguised. The more your nature is inclined to
look for it and the more your eye is trained and careful, the more you’ll see
it in any number of situations. Or feel it. Also, depending on the viewer, beauty
can just stay a pleasant fortuitous and not so meaningful diversion or else,
make its overwhelming and amazing way through the viewer’s brain cells. And although it can be painful at times, I
would personally never give away the feelings it rises.
As for wisdom, I suppose that to me is the maturity of thoughts. Something you gain through experience, knowledge, relationships and well, through life, basically. Balance. Self-confidence and the courage to make your own choices, to uphold them but also to learn from your mistakes. The capability to reconsider yourself and your decisions and to possibly accept critiques. The capacity to put yourself at stake and to stay humble and curious. In other words it is what keeps your feet on the ground. And it is absolutely necessary.
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