New York 101 Painting

Mixed media, collage and acrylic paint on paper on canvas. 155x155cm With the sentence “Mixed media, collage and acrylic paint” I mean this: I use a photographic base printed on paper to obtain as more details as possible, because if I drew everything (and I could) much of the charm of the city would be lost. I proceed to dissolve the printing pigment with vinylic glue applyied directly on the image (this happens when I glue the image facedown on canvas or paper). Then I tear away the first layer of paper, leaving a kind of “ghostly” image. At this point I spray the painting with water and I scratch the surface with sandpaper and chisels to show the raw paper below. This process can be repeated without any rule, spraying and scratching randomly, again and again, until I’m satisfied with the result.Then comes the fun part for me as I choose and lay down the color, deciding what part of the image will come out more, underlying dynamic lines to give visual strenght to the painting: the streets, the light that is reflected in the sky, and also the perspective lines of the buildings. What emerges is interesting to see as I try to capture the style of a city, its essence. From : Dario Moschetta’s paintings are a mixed media application of photography and traditional painting techniques, each picture an exercise in process, of capturing the essence of a city moving through time. While the subject matter is straightforward the process is not. Moschetta is an artist whose work is about the material and how it is worn down by time. To achieve his ravaged pictures of the city he begins by applying vinyl glue onto a scanned image which is placed face down onto the canvas. Once dried the paper is ripped off the canvas leaving the remnants of both the material and the original image, a ghost of the city. The canvas is then sprayed with water after which he begins scratching and sanding the material to create a textural quality that is reminiscent of a torn poster on a wall. Then he begins painting the picture highlighting aspects of his cityscape, the streets, the lights, the buildings. The result is a nostalgic and cinematic vision of the city, an attempt to capture the essence of a megalopolis in all its decaying glory. Here’s what he has to say about his work: I am an artist who loves to experiment. I like materials such as paper and canvas and acrylic paint, and I like to mix them in unusual ways, mixing glue and color paper and then meld them with the canvas. I like people, and bodies. I love painting towns, the busy life of the metropolis. I want the finished works resemble those posters you see on the street, all torn and worn out by time. The finished works are rough, irregular, uneven to the touch. In short: lived.