Resin Dye Texture 4 Painting

Vincenzo Mistretta is an artist and filmmaker from Aspra (PA), Sicily. As a graduate from Pratt Institute in NYC, he gained a BFA in painting in 1989. At Pratt he studied Fine Arts (Painting) and made his first film on Super-8 and his first video on VHS. He continued working in both painting and film and received an MA in 1998 and an MFA in 2006 in Media Study from SUNY Buffalo. In his films Mistretta works in experimental, narrative, and documentary, often utilizing a hybrid of all three. He identifies himself as a structural filmmaker. In 2006, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to continue his research on and documentation of the Women in Black anti-war movement in Rome, Italy. He has continued his interest in activist video with his documentary work on environmental issues in Buffalo, NY and LGBTQ+ rights in Mississippi. This series of paintings is called Sfantumata. The title “Sfantumata” for the series is a mutable Sicilian word which could mean broken down, cracked, weathered by time. The Sicilian language is a living language. People come up with words that are not in the official Sicilian dictionary. Sometimes a word is used in a single community or even a family. This is a word used in my small hometown, Aspra.