Can you tell us about your early experiences with art and what initially inspired you to start creating?
My early art experiences started since my childhood, at elementary schools. I remember when I was five that I filled my notebooks with my drawings inspired by cartoons,anime, bizarre situations: I’ve always find that a natural way to express my interior world, probably due to my reserved behavior. I won two scholastic prizes when I was ten! I was so happy and enthusiastic.
During next years I attended Art High School and the Fine Art Academy. I always try to make new art experiences and experimenting new techniques, I think there’s never a limit to creation’s potential and I think that the best is never stop and keep to “travel” creating.
How has living and working in Sicily influenced your artistic journey and the themes you explore in your work?
Especially in last years, Sicily and the urban context where I live inspired me so much. I made satirical artworks inspired by famous sicilian artworks as The Annunciate made by Antonello da Messina or the clockwork’s lion of the Messina’s Dome. These are works where I represent the icons of the city where I live in a “sacrilegious” way through the local food, the arancino. I choose this way to criticize (but also to celebrate) the point of view of many people that give more importance to food than to the art.
Since five years I discovered another unexpected face of my city: the outsider artist Giovanni Cammarata, that just with recycled objects and cement made a fantastic world in a peripheral degenerated area in Messina, Maregrosso, populated by fantastic creatures, stylized dinosaurs, the famous yellow elephants, historical characters, exotic animals and more, transforming his poor house in a merry and surreal place.
I admire so much the story and the work of this artist. I visited for the first time his art house five years ago and from that moment I’ve been positively shocked, I never saw anything like that before.
I hope that many people could know his artworks also through mine too.
You mentioned that art is the most sincere way for you to express yourself. Can you elaborate on what this means to you personally?
My eyes and my hands are my tongue. I believe that it’s surely for me, basically why I’m a very introvert person and silent too. Express myself through words isn’t easy for me, it’s hard in relationships too. I feel more comfortable and I have fun too “speaking” by the figurative language.
What inspired you to focus on anthropomorphic animals, especially elephants, in your current creative period?
In this period I’m focusing on making these anthropomorphic elephants surely because to Giovanni Cammarata’s influence. It has been an excellent starting point.
In general elephants are associated at memory, longevity, sensibility, strength; they’re also creatures similar to us human beings for many aspects: they pay tribute to their deceased similar, they celebrate the birth of a new puppy elephant. Moreover, they have a matriarchal society.
Unfortunately, they were also used during human conflicts as the Punic wars: I’ve often represented these creatures in war equipment with some modified features as the fangs and the tail replaced with pencils or brushes on the back and head too. I made this to represent them as symbolic totem of an imaginary war, where elephants are identified with the strength of Art and life against the degrade, depression, empty, solitude.
How do you channel your nightmares, fears, and positive emotions into your artwork?
I make often this kind of works while I’m emotional involved,as I’ve been in a trance state. So, when I don’t live that situation I make hard drawing these subjects. When I want to represent my suffering I drawing hearts or damaged self portraits surrounded by disgusting insects, especially cockroaches. They disgust me, I’m terrorized! When I’m stressed or sad, I dream them. But the real nightmare is find them near!
I drew this kind of subjects also for particular themes, as religious ones. I’ve often represented saints or religious figures as cockroaches because for me they have a negative meaning.
Positive emotions are represented by fantastic elephants and animals: recently I draw them as angels that fight against demons represented as a cockroach, symbols of depression, nightmares, sadness,suffering.
Why do you prefer using pastels, Bic pens, ink, and acrylics in your artwork? How do these mediums help you achieve the desired expressiveness?
I’ve always felt a certain attraction for Bic and ink pens. I’ve always been fascinated since I was reading early mangas and comics and I’ve always desired to inking my drawings to give them life. Bic pen is amazing, it’s a simply but efficient technique that everyone can use in any moment and on any support. Also, there are of different colors, green and orange too. Green pen is my favorite!
It’s possible to experiment different combination as green/orange, black/red, blue/red and more.
I’m experimenting ink since about two years, I’m in love of this technique: it’s so similar to painting but so much more versatile and efficient. I love pastels for their shades, they’re both attractive and fragile and it suffices that a more touch to make the artwork wrong or make it perfect.
I like associate them to other materials as colored pencils or watercolors to create more volume.
About acrylics I prefer them for their vivid colors and for rapid dry, besides their convenience.
How do you feel when you observe your completed works? Do you see them as static pieces, or do they continue to evolve in your mind?
It depends by kind of artworks I made and above all due the period that it has been created. Usually I’m satisfied and pride and when it happens I feel like drawing is a sort of son, I feel a feeling of affection for the artwork. About old works if I think that they can have potential, I improve the chiaroscuro, shading, colors, adding background,etc.
Sometimes I don’t want to improve a work, leaving it as it is, even in its imperfections. As if it were a “photo” of the era in which it was created, even with its negative sides.
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