Page 77 - Winter Issue

In your artist statement, you mention that creating the emotions you want to convey, and how did they
art is your most sincere form of expression. Can you come to represent these feelings for you?
share how this sincerity translates into your choice The insects that represent more than others my
of subjects, especially in your current focus on nightmares but also my fears, terror, and the sensation of
anthropomorphic animals? helplessness, are surely cockroaches: they’re creatures that
The anthropomorphic animals I draw are an expression of I find myself to live with, both in dreams and in reality.
my moods and thoughts in fantasy worlds. I mainly draw They represent also Negativity and depression.
animals joined to others, such as elephants and winged You often bring your nightmares and fears to life in
deer/fawns or self-portraits joined to other creatures that your work. How does visualizing these experiences
blend with natural elements. I love taking inspiration from on canvas help you process or understand them?
shapes and the natural world: I believe that Nature always It's the same action of drawing and painting to help me to
expresses itself spontaneously, always following a certain elaborate on this suffering. Making art becomes a cathartic
path and this is what I intend to do. experience.
Elephants appear often in your work, symbolically I’m able to elaborate and understand these emotions and
connecting to the identity of Sicily. How did this sensations by observing my artworks after a long time and
connection form, and what do elephants represent usually, I ask myself how much tension and suffering I was
for you in this context? experiencing while I was making that drawing or painting.
In the last years, I took very much inspiration from these
animals that I always found interesting. They're so sensitive
and empathic, long-lived, and with a great memory and The heart’s faces
oriented skill. Watercolors, markers and bic pens on paper,
I took the choice to make fantastic representations of these 35x25cm, 2024
animals after having known the artworks of a local
outsider artist, Giovanni Cammarata, creator of a yellow
elephants group inspired by Anibal's elephants' war during
the Punic Wars. His style, colors, and bright expressiveness
of these artworks reawakened my art.
The elephants are always connected to the story of Sicily
also before the human appearance: about 2,5 million
years ago appeared in the eastern part of this island the
"dwarf" elephants, a specific species of elephant with very
small dimensions, about 1mt of height, due to the
insularity; they were very long-lived too, being at that time
so few predators.
The rest of the dwarf elephant skeletons can be visited at
the Archaeological Museum "Paolo Orsi" in Syracuse.
The same Cyclops myth has been inspired by the elephant
skeletons found by Ancient Greeks, probably always in the
same area of Sicily.
Terrorized and shocked, they sure believed that the central
cavity in the skull where it found the proboscis was the
cavity that was a human eye.
As a last reference, the Elephants War arrived at the
ancient Carthage in Sicily during the First Punic War.
So, there are so many historical and artistic references that
connect Sicily to the elephants, so these discoveries
fascinated so much me that keep living them through my
art.
Insects serve as symbolic references for emotions
in your art. What qualities of insects resonate with

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