ON PAINTING

Painting has been always a challenge for me. I guess that's why I changed so often and why I love teaching it.

Colour has been my main concern for years. I studied theory, made systematic exercices and ended up with the flow of industrial lacquer from 1994-2000. The lacquer gave me the impression of what I am even more after: the unpredictable result. After these years of intense work with this incredible paint, I started including bits of collage. I felt that I had reached a limit: if I continued, I repeated myself, I became predictable

Later I took up some of my former works and started stucking fragments ofmagazine photos on them . The result was stunning. The use of collage gave a new meaning to the magma of lacquer and anchored it again in reality. What fascinated me was the fact that putting a piece of "reality" into such an abstract work, changed the painted (non figurative) areas into a figurative spot (galleries paintings1994-2001).

But again, after some time, I got tired of making "gardens " or "landscapes" even if I think that these works were really inspired. I turned to "blowing up" my collages, (from 2003-2005) by painting them on canvas. I developped a fast means of painting with high fidelity to the original collage, even if there were light changes in the final picture. Because of my renewed interest in painting, I made a sort of panorama of the history of art by "upgrading" masterpieces which - I felt - had lost their initial impact by the multiplication of reproductions, finally becoming banal. I know that this might be seen as contemptuous, but I think that I am in good company (Picasso for ex.). I also wanted to show the ideology behind some of those paintings made to glorify the rich and powerful (euro). Or I reflected on the situation of the painter in our days. I painted for ex. a selfportrait of Cézanne where the artist becomes a wounded boxer.

This interpretation reflects my own way of my struggling with the art scene and with me art. My paintings were meant as a kind of hommage to those artists, but with a hint of irony.

But again, this activity lost my interest because of the lack of surprise doing it. Collage was much more fun because of the thrill it gave me. I therefore tried to combine collage and painting: I paint first and glue magazine photos in the painting. The only limit being the small size of the magazines. I must say that this way of creating pictures is most challenging and adventurous. You can see these paintings in section: paintings with or from collages from 2002.