What made you decide to become an artist? What is your background ?
Like many, I started very small! In fact painting is a path that has been done by itself over the years and through encounters. Whether personally or professionally, I have always been in contact with the image. After studying advertising, I worked as a model maker, editorial secretary; film library rat I was a video representative, a field in which I ended up working as a camera operator and incidentally as an actor. At the same time, I followed the teaching of Virgilio Jatosti, Bruno Mathon and Jean-Yves Guionet in painting, a great liberator of creativity who made me move from image to painting.
What are the 3 things that make you different from other artists?
Improvisation, chance, serendipity
Where does your inspiration come from?
What inspires me are the accidents that I install on my sheet and from which I work, build, develop, organize, compose, harmonize by sticking as much as possible to what the painting presents to me. Creativity is getting out of comparison, intention, imitation, repetition, modeling, compensation.
Tell us about the conception of your works, do you have a long preparatory work or is it quite spontaneous?
I paint Darwinist and not creationist. I accompany more than I impose. The intention comes very late in my painting and only when you have to meet the criteria of composition, harmony, rhythm.
What do you want to show through your work?
Far from artistic performance and academic competence, I want to show that the eye can feast on a painting that primarily addresses emotion, the senses, astonishment rather than the intellect. .
In your work do you use techniques or materials that are out of the ordinary?
I only work on paper. I use caparol to prepare the paper, then heavy turpentine oil paint, newspaper and cling film.
Do you have a favorite format? Why ?
Grape or half-grape format paper. Two formats in which I find myself perfectly at ease.
What difficulties do you encounter in your work?
For the moment, none.
How do you work? At home, in a shared workshop, in your own workshop?
In a shared workshop.
Does the work of an artist take you to travel a lot?
No
What has been the best moment of your career?
When following an exhibition a visitor wished to come to my home to see more works.
How do you see your work in ten years?
I have no vision of the evolution of my work. It is done, period. It's very exciting to see this one moving all the time and I think it will be in the years to come.
What are you currently working on? Are you planning an exhibition soon?
In anticipation, an exhibition in Arles in May 2022.
If you could have created a masterpiece in the history of art, which one would you choose? Why ?
Fear of Neighbor, 1967, Lanskoy. Because this work and in general Lanskoy's work shows the limits of the human mind which cannot think of such a painting except with its hand.
If you could invite a famous artist for dinner (dead or alive), which one would you choose? Why ?
Bram Van Velde for the relevance of his thinking on painting.
Olimpia Gaia Martinelli
