Nose Piercing - Next of (s) Kin series Painting

Petrone (b. 1975, Brazil) studied Applied Linguistics at Birkbeck College, University of London and attended Abstract Art and Portrait Painting at Mary Ward Centre, London. Petrone is interested in the effect of language as it shapes human experience, in particular the study of post-colonial discourse, gender identity and cultural hybridity. In these studies and interests he finds his artistic expression. In his practice, he uses ink, oil, acrylics and pastels, as well as writing and other means such as upcycling and collage, to reflect upon the human condition and the uneasiness of our cultural and gender identities and their enactments. To Petrone, painting is a means through which re-thinking culture is suggested to the viewer. His figurative studies reject historically imposed aesthetics and focus on abbreviations of human routines, laid out on canvas, waiting to be studied, to be analysed. They are echoes of cultures, but culture can mean nothing at all, if in its representation one cannot see oneself rightfully depicted. Petrone tries to achieve revised ways of human representation in his paintings, and his approach to storytelling gazes at the unsung heroes and heroines of his culturally and linguistically hybrid upbringing, reflecting upon the rich, colourful and diverse elements they carried with them. Naturally attracted to painting figurative expressionism and narratives, Petrone visits the beautiful and the happy, as well as the eerie and the grotesque in his artwork. Petrone works and lives in London, United Kingdom.