Claude Monet's garden at Giverny Painting

I am an Italian entrepreneur who has lived for a long time in London but who recently returned to his hometown, Turin. Even though I hadn't pursued art studies, in March 2019 I decided that I needed a change in my life, and wanted to develop my creative side more. So I started taking oil painting lessons at the Pictor Academy where I was lucky to have Aldo Antonietti as a teacher (www.pictor.it/docenti/aldo-antonietti). My painting is essentially figurative and I like to reproduce landscapes and portraits in particular. For me, painting is the best way to immortalize particularly significant and pleasant memories so as to perpetrate the memory in the more distant future. Pablo Picasso said "Painting is just another way of keeping a diary". Since I am also passionate about photography, my 'modus operandi' normally involves recovering one of my photos taken in the past that reminds me of something particularly important or enjoyable to me. Then, starting from the photo, I try to reproduce it on the canvas. Obviously, the process does not lack a certain amount of interpretation of the photo / memory itself so the final effect will never be a mere duplication of the photo. It is my way of transferring my feelings and sensations onto the canvas that that photo / memory rekindles in me.