Marianna Malaspina

I always loved paint and colors, I remember being ten year old and in heaven when my father, an engineer, built for me something I had seen at a fair and fell in love with, a sort of disks player where one would pour paint on the wood plates and then push a button and the thing would start spinning and the paint would create crazy splashing effects. That was 1972, and spin art had started being made by Annick Gendron, Alfons Schilling ad other.

But I only took my first painting class in New York in my early thirties. Of that very first class I remember two things: my hope that the model would not take off all his clothes and what the teacher kept repeating “Squint your eyes”. Probably one of the most important things a beginner can learn.

I went back to colors around 2000, taking evening classes at the Art Students League in NYC for water color on Thursday evenings with Fredrick Wong, who passed away in 2019, and pastels on Wednesday with a teacher who was great but whose name unfortunately I can not remember. Selling a painting at the League Christmas students exhibition was one of the happiest moments of those years. I just could not believe someone would part from money to hang on his or her wall or give as a present something...

I took classes in watercolors and pastels at the Art Student League in New York with Friedrick Wong in 2000 and 2001 and followed the classes of Frank O'Cain online more recently after having moved to Berlin, but I am for the most part self taught.