Beach Painting

A tale of a silent kid that that became a painter… There’s more to it. You see, this is not a fairytale, but a real story. My name is Davide Zappia and I was born in 1983 in the surroundings of Turin, Italy. Zappia of course starts with Z, which is the last letter of the alphabet and the reason I always got picked last. This didn’t help of course, because I was shy and always in the back of everything. I then became a man, and all of those traits followed. I always worked as good graphic designer, for over fifteen years working in the same corporate computer company. To sum it up I was never the hero, I never really had a super cool story line. Yet something happened that would completely change the trajectory of my story. One morning in July, I was called into my bosses office, and yes… You can guess what happened next. I was fired…Corporate restructuring. Right now you might be thinking that there has to be a turning point. Something big is bound to happen, but nope… Nothing. The good thing is the story of course didn’t end there. Life did not throw anything to me, or I didn’t stumble upon a secret that would change everything, but I always fell back to one thing, and that one thing is painting… As a child, I was shy and introverted, but I was also a painter. Even though I did not live in a fairytale land, I was able to build that land in my paintings. There is nothing more magical than painting, and I am not afraid to say this; I am a painter of minimal abstract art. Before explaining my relationship with painting, I should tell you that describing myself as a reserved man. Perhaps full of euphemism. The truth is that I suffer from social anxiety and feel uncomfortable with verbal communication. Painting is the only channel of expression in which I feel free. I love abstract-minimal art because it is a liberating act. It allows me to create an atmosphere far from reality. At the same time it is a space, in which perception and formal limitations are subverted. I like to think that a painting is the ground for a communication exchange between myself and the observer, and that such communication happens beyond your average everyday communication. When you buy one of my paintings, I take the back seat. Once painted, the canvas no longer belongs to me, it belongs to you who have acquired it and not only as property, but as meaning. Become your art piece, by mirroring yourself in it and become its author.