15 Napoleon Bees Collage

'Il faut être absolument moderne!' (one must be absolutely modern). Well, I couldn't disagree more. ​ If you’re anything like me then you’ll find modern life pretty hard. It can actually make you sick. It's funny how reality doesn’t care. Have you noticed that today you’re only judged by the volume of people you can impact? Get naked for one person and you might just make them smile, get naked for fifty million people and you might just be Kim Kardashian. If you don’t accept this, then the judgement of the world will seem very unfair indeed. No, I don't want to be absolument moderne. Why? Because I've realised that being modern today cannot escape accepting technology unquestioningly. If you’re anything like me then you’ll find that technology is actually proceeding too fast and is eroding human character. Here's my story. After ten years working in advertising, mostly creating campaigns for corporate companies, I came to the conclusion  that I wanted to create something meaningful and tangible. I started to feel the urge to commit myself to a career in which I could use my creativity to make a positive difference for the people around me. I wanted to become an artist. ​ I've been drawing, painting and even composing music most of my life, but I found my ultimate inspiration and the key idea to convey my message in a book by Junichiro Tanizaki, 'In Praise of Shadows', and more specifically in this line: 'The quality that we call beauty must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors' My goal was now crystal clear: creating contemporary art which mingles Japanese aesthetics with Italian flair. Why? Because I'm an Italian artist in love with Edo period, which one could easily compare to the Italian's image of Renaissance. They both seek to capture the beauty and mystery of the natural world. As luck would have it, when my wife was offered to work on a project in Tokyo (!), I had the opportunity to really get under the skin of Japanese art, work with well-known masters and deepen my knowledge of traditional arts (sumi, gyotaku, ukiyo-e) as well as contemporary. There are good reasons to be an artist. And the greatest reward I get comes from people like you: knowing that my work is in people’s homes where they can love it every day, that someone loves it enough to buy it because they feel inspired. If you are anything like my collectors, you'll have an appreciation for design, craft and uniqueness.