Color as language
At school, to say that a color was particularly bright, they said it was “genzianico” (“gentian-like”): my bond with color was already evident back then. I came to Tuscany as a girl, from Abruzzo, with a suitcase full of literature and philosophy. San Gimignano became my home, and I chose to stay.
For many years I devoted my energy to other things as well: restaurants to run, four children to raise, days that left little room for brushes. But I never abandoned art: it was in the images I carried in my head, in the houses I transformed, in the restaurants I opened, in the walls I painted between one service and the next, in the artworks I made for others.
For years I chaired the Lumière festival, and there I understood something else about myself. With light alone, and its absence, the look of a city could be changed: for one night San Gimignano stepped out of time and became pure atmosphere, as I had imagined it. Conceiving and creating that festival was my way of saying, without words, that color and shadow were my language.
When I use a lot of color, often in several layers, it is to give body to a presence in the matter.
I paint from what I feel; if you try to classify the result, expressionism and surrealism come to mind, without any label being enough. In my canvases landscapes, animals, faces and women’s bodies return, presences with a strength of their own. I use dense, vivid, layered colors: they do not decorate the surface, they inhabit it.
I do not work only on canvas: I paint walls, floors, furniture. I make upholstery for armchairs, curtains and cushions, and combine fabrics with the same freedom with which I choose colors. For me, every space can become a work of art to live in.
I have changed paths more than once, and on every path color has been the common thread. Every painting you find here is a piece of that journey.
The rabbit is my signature
It was born by chance and since then it reappears in several artworks, each time in a different colorful outfit and in new situations. I use it to give a face to my moods.
Sometimes it is a warning, sometimes a sentinel, sometimes an ironic presence.
Where would you like to start?