Gemma Mazzotti: “The most exciting thing for sure is to be in front of a blank canvas, be it large or small: it is the window of the world where I can build my image, which takes space and shape through lines and backgrounds.”
How and why did you start your artistic career?
I have always drawn since I was a child, so there is no real ‘why’ I started this, but rather my whole life up to now has been a development and deepening over time of what I liked to do in childhood, a consolidation and building up over the years of what has always been for me the preferred language with which to express myself and relate to the world in general.
There are various people I would have to mention in order to list the various ‘yes’ I have said to being a painter today, but certainly one of the most important is Adriano Bimbi, my professor when I was at the Accademia in Florence. At that time, I was able to experience art shared with other young people who, like me, wanted to be painters. So it was crucial to be in the right place and the right time to make this inclination of mine grow and develop as a thought and work.
How did you discover your medium and why did you choose it?
I discovered my medium, which is oil painting, by working and painting without excluding anything that could be interesting to investigate an expressive datum. For example, in the case of the work ‘Anima Dannata-Ophelia’, I felt the need to start the painting from the construction of the body in the space of the canvas, but instead of using the classic drawing, I used pieces of paper glued together to arrive at a synthesis and form in an immediate way, as if it were light.
I often do the same with oil painting: the bright, clear colours are the light at the basis of everything that will then be the image of the painting.
In my way of proceeding, it is the need for expression that directs the choice of medium, the great ductility of oil colour makes it my preferred medium.
Can you talk about your creative process?
I answered a little in the previous question because the medium and the end are closely linked.
The most exciting thing for sure is to be in front of a blank canvas, be it large or small: it is the window of the world where I can build my image, which takes space and shape through lines and backgrounds.
I pay a lot of attention to the transparencies and opacities that go into building the image, relying on the power of colours that create as many suggestions and compositions as the line of a drawing.
The ideal is to marry line drawing and shape drawing (colour fields). These two types of drawing leaning on each other, supporting or distancing, make their play and the final picture.
It is important to orchestrate together so many differences in tone, line, shape, sense… and then let the image almost naturally emerge. For me, the naturalness of the image, even in its precise and profound construction, is a sign of a good painting. One should not feel the fatigue of the work, but more a deep, intense, lightness.
To help this process, I always start with pencil drawing on paper, then sometimes I translate the sign through engraving where I insert softer, more painterly elements (through the countless painterly techniques of engraving) and then I arrive at the actual canvas where I can finally put together what I have obtained.
How does your work come about? How long does it take to create a work? When do you know it is finished?
My work is born from life, whether it is a film I have seen, a place I have lived, a person I have met, a sentence I have heard on the fly, a song…. I always try to keep myself listening and collect everything that can make my small cultural/experiential baggage great, from which I always draw.
When I am in crisis, I pick up works or drawings on paper dating back to a residency in Brazil in 2018, where I always manage to find my pictorial character by channelling it into the various images I am investigating at the time.
I have recurring themes that always accompany my work and gradually emerge in various periods, to summarise them are:
the fragility in the body, the vividness of the spirit, the contradictions of a desire, the strength in nature.
All my works are quite immediate, I have a fast painting that finishes a painting within a few days. But the preparation is long because in front of the painting I don’t even have to think about what I am doing, I just have to do it. When I open the ‘tap’, other paintings on the theme come out and there is a cycle of works…with some unicums of course.
The painting is finished when I never tire of looking at it and I have said not only what I had to say but also something more, which I did not expect. In fact, the great thing about finished paintings is that they fill me with awe as if someone else had done them.
Who are your favorite artists? Which ones are you inspired by?
My favourite artists are Michelangelo, Masaccio, Gauguin, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Matisse, Picasso, Munch, David Hockney, Cézanne.
Definitely of great reference in my painting are Edward Munch for his shocking and passionate drama, all wrapped up in this violet, cold, sticky and melting light of his; Paul Cézanne for his construction and his willingness to always mix the sky with the earth and finally the good Henri Matisse for his great joie de vivre.My favourite artists are Michelangelo, Masaccio, Gauguin, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Matisse, Picasso, Munch, David Hockney, Cézanne.
THE ARTIST
Name: Gemma Mazzotti
Residence: Italy
FEATURED WORKS
FEATURED WORKS
