The artist

 

THE REASONS WHY I PAINT, THAT IS: INNER WORLDS

I have always had this burning desire to paint a horse, I could feel it in my fingers and my stomach. I figured it out in my car while driving back home. It was a purple and red horse riding towards flaming colours sullying it with yellow and azure. Canvases are just windows, windows opening and revealing inner worlds. Those worlds which everyday life ineluctably overwhelms. Yet, sometimes, like magic, the windows separating inner worlds from outer ones are left open or ajar and a tiny piece of soul flies away and settles among colours and canvases. Every now and then time stops; that's when you can shed a new light on things; a moment becomes a day; days years and when the last stroke is given, you can feel inside as if long time passed by. The canvas is a mirror where you can reflect shapes, colours, and wishes of never-ending worlds man locks in his inner self. Colours become feelings, emotions pulled out from inside which push to be taken out, to be born. They are minute pieces of soul becoming coloured horses laughing or weeping, lonely and astonished women wondering about the reasons underlying existence and life mysteries. Trees have wings and fly since everything is magic, everything can be created by a blank canvas - an entire world to be formed. Every painting has its own life, independent of the artist's will. What the painter has to do is to bring this life to light, then the work doesn't belong to him/her anymore. When the windows on souls, on spirits are left open, these worlds run away and start living their own lives. Art (music, sculpture, writing or painting) is the only device which allows us to climb the walls we have built to separate inner and outer worlds. Painting is an extraordinary bridge linking endless inner worlds - everlasting, coloured and magical - to the outer world, less and less magical.

What would life be like if we could not grasp through colours the magical sense of life, if we were not able to feel amazed and build new worlds any longer?

(Filomena Oppido)