Q: There is a spiritual quality to your paintings, what inspires the visions you paint?
A: I think it’s a dimension of suspense and anticipation. Since I was a child, when I lost my mother prematurely, this loss placed me in front of the unknown, and that which abruptly takes life. For me, death, from the start, became synonymous with questions without answers and for a long time death became identified with a voyage without destination, a search towards the unknown.
The certainty and conviction in myself grew roots towards that diaphragm that divides the real world from the spiritual. The diaphragm that separates and the vibrations necessary to give pictorial substance to my iconographic world.
Q: I noticed an aquatic quality to your images. Does water have a special significance to you?
A: Water for me is simply the function of a medium to dilute the concentration of darkness that accumulates in my soul. Water is the necessary and vital element to clean such darkness, the fluid for cleansing and purifying that allows more liberty for my carnal limits to unfold.
Q: If you could travel in time to meet any artist, who would it be?
A: If I could travel in time, my first stop would certainly be ancient Greece. Successively, I would search for answers to those biblical and Sumerian questions still unresolved, then I would travel to a time much closer to our own. I would certainly want to meet Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo, and coming closer to our own time I would definitely want to befriend in a brotherly fashion, Gustave Moreau, Remabud, and Oscar Wilde.
Q: Are there any particular artists that inspire you, past or present?
A: Certainly iconographic codes that move the expression of the artistic spirit of every age is useful in constructing my expressive alchemy. Every artistic age and history is necessary to distill a language that is more in line with my personal world which is definitely eclectic and occult even to my consciousness. In the past, certainly ancient Greece – both archaic and classic – but also the Assyrian people of Babylon, or the great and mysterious Egyptian civilization. My contemporaries of influence could certainly be many. We are in an era in which the diversity of language allows for a kaleidoscope of emotion that subjects fascination beyond any current expression. From the many and significant, certainly Odd Nerdrum, Werner Tubke, and Lopez Garcia, are the individuals that I identify with.
Q: Did you have formal training as a painter or are you self taught?
A: The formation of painting began since I was young without any formal or academic training. From the beginning, I had a need to express myself with pictures and color. From the very start, I have searched ulterior grand exponents of art from the past, the method and the look necessary to perfect my artistic language which is always playable and mutating depending on my life experience. I certainly consider myself self taught, simply due to the fact that schools in Italy were never able to satisfy my hunger for the pictorial, and drawing on knowledge.
Q: What gave you the first creative spark to paint and how old where you?
A: I am unable to reconstruct this moment as it is too far in the past and is now lost in the meanderings of a nebulous memory. Certainly the closeness to a father, who at an extremely early and tender age recognized my natural tendency towards art, immediately cultivated this kernel in me that sprouted by giving me books of the masters and bringing me to some of the most important museums in Italy. Also, the sweetest of feminine figures, my sage cousin who was much older, was able to inject my desire by encouraging me to identify myself with the more philosophical and aesthetic disciplines since the first years of school.
Q: Are there others in your family who are creatively inclined?
A: Certainly. In my family I have a brother, Andrea, who is dedicated to music. He is a singer of ancient songs. He is an entertainer of great talent. I follow his musical career closely, even his varied European concerts. He also was a lover of music since a very early age and from the beginning, he and I established a synergy of intent tied to art and song.
Q: Was there a particular person in the past who nurtured your creativity?
A: Certainly, and like I said before, my cousin who became close to me immediately after the death of my mother to protect me and educate us of the right and good in the world. She instinctively saw in me the inclination of visual art and in my brother the desire of studying music. She was a teacher of classic literature and language, and from the start inspired me to understand ancient Greek language and also their literary culture.
Q: What do you do to relax? What do you do to re-energize yourself?
A: To relax, only painting can render my days happier. Drawing especially is a discipline necessary for the maturity of images hidden in my soul and in my most interior being. Certainly trips to exotic destinations inspire me. Visiting museums and temples where the works of the ingenious human kind play, is where my life receives the greatest fulfillment. Also, certainly literature. When I am able to find the time necessary for the formation of my craft, it is very important.
Q: What is your moment of perfection?
A: It is the moment in which I begin a painting, or a new drawing. It is the moment most pure in my life where the carnal existence dissolves perfectly and mixes with my spirit at the height of my intellect most profound. It is at that time that I am able to reach closest the mystery of creation, the mystery of “making” and to make the sublime from nothing… and in time that creates the sparks of my illumination.
Translated by Alexandro Bolongaro