You know what life is? Print

I've lived multiple lives in my life. I have been involved in conservative restoration, artistic ceramics, interior decoration, and more. But my most intimate passion has always been and still is her: painting. Nothing, like painting, hunts me and heals me. Artistic practice As a support I prefer canvas, but I also love the 600 gram cotton cardboard. All my paintings are in oil, then, according to the type of support, I apply oxides or colored earths with different techniques, with wax masking. Sometimes I use the Gold Leaf, a technique that I have mastered thanks to my experience in restoration and gilding. Waxes, friezes, glazes, brush strokes obscure the naked reality, like a sort of "Maya veil". Artistic influences I grew up among the Paladins, the epic heroes represented in the Sicilian traditional puppet theater. When I was a child, in the darkness I saw them move, I heard them talking to each other, I imagined they had a life parallel to ours. The paintings of this genre enhance the epic nature of everyday life: each of us "wears" a breastplate to protect ourselves and we all hold a sword to strike others. We also need the helmet to ignore everything that is not part of our small court. The Paladins represent the hero within us and at the same time the fortress that protects our heart. My first teacher was the painter Natale Napoli, who painted the sets for the Teatro dei Pupi. The influences of the neo-realist painter Renato Guttuso are also evident, with his incisive stroke and the use of contrasting colors. Inspirations I draw inspiration from human figures, especially of the female gender, by putting their faces in the foreground. In fact, in every face I try to catch my expression, my state of mind. The story is mine when I identify with the subject's gaze to the point of being moved. I can't paint a face that doesn't upset my stomach, that doesn't reflect a face in my soul.