Voices

Diving into expressionism

"I feel up to now I haven't really been playing – just merely fooling around: I have just been getting ready. I feel the game is starting to get real only now. I'm not even sure I could even call "art" any of the work that I've done before. Now, for the first time, I feel that I understand. I have trained my voice, and now I am finally speaking up – I feel I'm blooming. Everything feels so real right now, everything feels so true."

 

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"I am developing a much deeper perception of the direction in which my art is taking me. During the past weeks I have introduced colour into my drawings in an almost unexpected way: very quickly and very smoothly, surprisingly, but at the same time a bit abruptly in what it transmits. These are some of the best pieces that I've ever produced, working with Chloe, with Sophie and with India." 

 

 

"My use of colour responds to something way deeper than just aesthetic technique. I have realised how my trip to Vienna brought me more and more into an expressionist setting, as this is something that I have tried to develop for months and even years, but I hadn't really been able to. I am realising now that the reasons had really nothing to do with art or artistic technique, but with my own fears and my own self-understanding – it is the self-resolution of my own internal conflicts that is bringing the debacle to the surface, and with it my own, true expression."  

  

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"Since I went to Australia and I realised the importance of the model in life drawing (as compared to what I had initially seen in England – before I had my group of reference in London –, and especially in Cambridge many times, where people were obsessed with the technique and praised realism as the ultimate proof of artistic development) – I have tried to run away from just a merely realistic or impressionist artistic procedure, in which the technique was protagonist (a technique that I now more and more consider totally plain and empty of meaning), and tried to dive more into expressing something deeper, sending a message, and most of all telling the truth with brutal honesty (which I consider to be the most important rule in art)." 
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"I have the big need of using the painting as a way to express a deeper feeling, which can be that of the model – as they many times share with me how they are feeling at the time –, that of the artist in the way in which I react to that model’s feeling, or even the way I myself am feeling at the time, not necessarily as evoked by the model. I have kept researching on these lines – clothing and colour."
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"Now that I have been able to overcome some fears and blocks that I had, I feel much more able to experiment and remove my own boundaries in the field of art – to be able to express a much honest, truer vision. I have always stated that, for me, the most important rule in the arts is to always tell the truth, and I feel that I am paying more and more tribute to this rule since barely a month ago, as I first acknowledged in Vienna, and that I am starting to understand and develop further with my work. This is really of capital importance to me." 
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‎‎"I have painted many nude people, but now for the first time I am truly feeling that I am the one who, as an artist, is naked in front of the paper, and in front of the world who's gonna receive my art. I have truly unblocked the next steps of my own diving into expressionism at a different level, taking me a step further into the meaning of what I do as an artist – what I owe to art and the world through the things that I devote myself to."

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"In these drawings of India, I could really feel how it was not me who was drawing anymore – it was a much stronger force that was creating. My own feelings were entangled in the creation and, as the ultimate epitome of the art, I was expressing with paint what my words were unable to say. I felt my voice was stronger, a real instrument of the artistic force." 
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"I wanted a more aggressive representation, I wanted to make the viewer part of the creation. The gaze is critical." 

 

"I want colour to take control – and this sounds quite surprising, as I have only started to incorporate colour into my drawings. However, it feels so right to me – if feels true and correct, as if I had been doing this for years. I want every single bit of me to be under the spell of the expression – nothing could feel more real to me." 

 

"I want a thicker, more tractable mix of colour, and for this I have started to add thickening agents to the gouache. I switched from watercolour to gouache to achieve a higher level of personality: removing some of the transparency made my drawings speak with a louder voice. I have tried adding different resins and bases of impasto to create a more plastic result." 

"Art is a necessity. Why is it crucial? What makes it essential? What connects art with the something bigger? What awards it its impact? Why me? If the purpose of all this is unique, if it’s real, then I’m here to do what only I can do. But is this simply that individualistic? Is there a higher end to what I’m devoting my life to? Or just empty shells on the shore?" 

  

"I more and more believe that trust is what this is all about, but still—what’s it that I’m supposed to tell? What’s the plot of my artistic let-go?"

"When the feeling is too big to hold it in my tiny soul, when I run out of words, then I draw, I paint. In that overwhelming state of greatness, when my brain starts to be conscious of the fact that it just cannot understand all of it, all of the beauty, all of the love, it needs to overflow, it spills as lines and paint—it’s the ultimate shape of expression: in that state it’s just me, all of me without condiments! It’s true. What makes it the truth? How do I connect that to the wider human world? How do I use it, how do I hold it, how can I do what I’m supposed to do? How do I grow, how do I let myself go? Create, create."