odettes

Here I am posting some of my newest watercolors.... Many people have asked me, why women? Yes, most of my pantings are about women. I have made some few landscapes, still life, and also some men :))) but in most cases I finish making a painting of a woman. I wonder myself why? And I guess it is because when I paint the face or the body of a woman I feel more the reflection of myself in the painting. I know...all paintings are selfportraits, but when I paint a woman I feel myself closer to the subject I have chosen. Not "closer" but "the closest"....yes I like to live my paintings, to dip myself in them :)))

Today I was scanning some watercolors I have made on this month and I found this two ones. And I don't know why but I liked them very much although they look rough and unfinished.

This 2 oils were just finished today... I am posting them without colors just to see if they still have impact. A very good friend, Italian art critic Marina Zatta after seeing my new paintings wrote me the following: "usavi il colore in maniera troppo invadente rispetto all'espressività dell'insieme, come se il colore fosse il fine e non il mezzo per ottenere un espressione. ora invece sei riuscita a pulire i tuoi lavori, a renderli più fluidi, scorrevoli e questo non ha tolto nulla al discorso espressivo, anzi, l'ha reso più chiaro. credo fosse picasso che diceva che chi toglie aggiunge e chi aggiunge toglie. io sono pienamente daccordo". TRANSLATION to English: You used colors in a very intruding way in reference to the expressivity of the whole, as if colors were the goal and not the media to achieve an expression. Now You are able to polish your work, to make it more fluid, flowing and this has not broken the expressive speech, but on the contrary it has mad...

Thank you so much for your interesting comment Alex. Yes, I agree with you, our environment is image polluted! And I also think the same regarding hyperrealism, there's a huge technic when photos are copied from a diapositive projector in order to make a painting... I cannot denied that, but then the image doesn't travel through the painter but through a dias projector! The new painting did'nt catch the life that was inside the painter, because it went through an object. Of course in every rule there are exceptions and I ought to tell you that I was once overwhelmed by a painting I saw at the Smithsonian made by Chuck Close. It is a huge self portrait, and it was obvious made through a dias projector, but although that the painting was alive....

I think there is a misunderstanding here. Photography and cinematography are huge arts, I love them and I am very fond of them, but I am not talking of art now. however, I will later... I was talking, why painting images differs from the images we see all around. In my opinion a painting is a charged image, because it has passed through the painter ... literary. Photography is a gross document, that's why sometimes it is so easily banalized. Of course the way photographers frame images, the composition they found is in their photography eyes only, and they can use filters and change shadows, tones, etc. but they are still working with an outside image, it is not an image that comes from the inside like painters do....S. Cometa, remember Chevalier book, when she describes the way a painter looks! Painting is the result of the visual digestion a painter has made. A digestion thay may produce vomits and diarrheas too, like Caballero has said, but that`s another problem. See? we ...

Nowadays our world is crowded with images: photograhy, movies, publicity, tv and all media. There are so many than we hardly "see" them. But PAINTING does not have anything to do with those banal images. Luis Caballero says that Painting is just the opposite: the sacralization of an image....and I agree with this. A painting is a charged image, it is the result of the visual digestion of a painter, that's why a good painting will always catch our attention, it is a "pregned" image, it has something of the artist inside. And it has its own life as well ... that's why it enraptures us!