After painting landscapes characterized by dense fantastic vegetation, I returned to still life with a new awareness. I didn’t want to treat the landscape and still life genres as two watertight compartments but I tried to merge, to contaminate the still life with live plant elements. The latest works, including Orchids and the blue amulet, are representative of this intention of mine, where nature reappropriates its spaces, interacting and enveloping the subjects of the painting. This path also led me to rediscover and enhance the primitive and pure forms, such as those of the Platonic solids, which become the support and counterpoint to nature, perhaps a need to go back to the origins. In some of these paintings we see small seedlings growing just below the objects just as we can see, walking the streets of a city, nature growing in the interstices or between the cracks in the asphalt. Unexpectedly effective living conditions. There are also other small signs of a still persistent vitality, such as a drop of resin detaching from a dry branch. I also indirectly represented the passage of time, another important theme for me, imagining these objects abandoned for a long time until nature discovers them, creating a new and unexpected harmony.

The objects chosen in this painting, so distant from antiquity, are meant to modernise the famous Greek myths “The apple of discord” trying to find a new, unusual meaning. The golden balloon, clear reference to the golden apple and typical item of a modern party, here is shaped as the letter “S” of “Surprise”, hinting at an unexpected event. The red teapot and the two pastries stand out and seem to compete for space, recalling the three goddesses claiming the trophy. The golden apple of the myth here is a common, humble “Golden Delicious” placed in the background since discord, not always evident, can be easily hidden by a mocking smile or a veiled joke. The phrase in ancient Greek “to the most beautiful”, engraved in the golden apple, here is an adhesive label but, looking more carefully, we can notice that the label is partially peeled off: then what is the real “Surprise”? Disarming the discord and avoiding its traps only require small gestures: remove the label! The apple will turn again into a simple, humble and healthy fruit.

I often paint still-life as I am attracted to the objects, the fruit and all the correlations that can arise by bringing them together. This brightly colored work deals with a topic dear to art: Time as an elusive, unstoppable entity that constrains our life. In a flat space, three old jugs occupy most of the painting resulting almost impending. By observing them carefully you can see small scratches on the enamel: witnesses of the passing of existence. The ruthless and fatal passing of time makes the clock, at the center of the picture, the main  protagonist. Its hands are still. No noise. It represents a moment freed by the time. Everything is motionless. Defined. Unalterable. A moment of clarity that opens up a new dimension: suspension, to be able to think. The snail, a children’s toy, could show us a  new possible way of living the time, not the frantic and harsh time that we often experience today, but a different one slow and gradual. The snail’s antennas and its big eyes might be an invitation to a new awareness.

This natural landscape is populated by a vegetation consisting of real plants together with others of my invention. Everything is represented in detail, each element has been investigated and analyzed as if it really existed. On the contrary, it is an imaginary world, the result of fantasy, where real plants spontaneously interact with the invented ones, an unforced and  meaningful flora pervaded by a mysterious and unexpected mysticism. Unusual combinations, immense flowers and contrasting colors are highlighted by a restless atmosphere which darkens  the mountains in the background and makes them blurred and shaded. There are no human figures, but the yellow flowers seem to replace them, they are the real passionate and expressive protagonists: they seem to tear the darkness with their burst of energy, asceticism and passion. The small dimension of the work is intentional: those who want to observe this world must get closer to it in order to  discover the details and dive in a new dimension. A sort of miniature that needs a break from today’s world, a contemporary world full of pictures which do not attract our attention and do not require any slowdown for observation.

This painting is inspired to Chiswick House, a work by the painter William Hogarth, (1741). I have reinterpreted it leaving the lowest part unchanged. The two figures, in eighteenth-century clothes, occupy a defined space similar to a theatre stage, a clean and  linear area  dominated by a strict order. I also kept  other two elements: the hedge and the balustrade. The shaped and pruned hedge, because of the human intervention, is  an architectonical element more than a natural one and the balustrade is its  artificial extension. They act as a border: the last bulwark of a world with codified rules. And here comes the Nature. Meaningful and mystical, spontaneous and intrusive, with its improbable combinations of plants and flowers, its inner and powerful vitality, its unconventional vegetation, it takes over any pre-fixed rule! The two figures in the foreground observing  and commenting on the unexpected scenario, with their classic elegance, create a surprising contrast with the restless and whimsical nature. It is a miniature played on clashes. The new world, pervaded by a soft light, is meant to convey a sense of the unknown and adventure. A new dimension: not scary, but imaginative and unexplored.