When we talk about artists, usually, a list of their exhibition is being made, the artworks are being shown, but a shallow approach involves the process, the feelings, the thoughts of those who need to create. The purpose of this article is to present the interview made with a living artist, without the use of pictures but only of words, of questions and answers, of thoughts that occur during the conversation. Here’s a brief extract:
Drawing and painting get entwined in your work. Are there any other expressive means that intrigue you?
There’s an interest that sometimes follows, of revealing the drawing on a hard surface onto which it could be engraved: chalk, engraving boards, wood… because sometimes when I’m drawing, the sheet gets engraved and punctured.
If your work where to be a book, which one should it be?
This is an amazing question! I dare… just because I feel it as a woman: the Journals of Sylvia Plath. I can better decipher the act of living the painting or how I am being lived by it, instead of the outcome of the painting, of the artwork.
Is there any particular physical feeling that makes you say: I have to work today?
Of course, an impelling boost of breath. I can feel it by the way I breathe. I breathe while I’m working, I get choked while I’m not working or when I can’t manage to. I need to breathe and lay on the ground, I feel my body that gets filled with oxygen.
Which living artists intrigue you?
The first artists that come to my mind are two painters and two film directors: David Hockney and Marlene Dumas, Lars von Trier and David Lynch.
What is the place that fits the most for displaying your artworks? Where do you see them?
In a place where an artistic, humane and cultural benefit can be found. In which the visitor can find water for his thirst.
Where do you find this water? In which physical locations?
The physical locations that I find meaningful are museums, cinemas, theaters and libraries. Places dedicated to art and to poetry as an absolute value.
Are you reading something at the moment?
A few days ago, while travelling by train, I started reading Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis and I’m almost at the end of Isis Unveiled by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.
Which book should each artist read?
The letters of van Gogh…
The full interview with Samuele Papiro is posted on:
