Fresco portraits

The characteristic of these portraits is the link between the framing of the image, inspired by pop art portraits, and the high quality and nobility of the fresco technique resulting a work of large dimensions, with a contemporary look and a strong emotional impact.

Basically I developed fresco painting in three different ways where technique and planning become appropriate procedures for the artwork.

The first way is the traditional one, Buon Fresco , where mineral pigments mixed fresh water are painted on wet lime mortar in thin layers of colour called velature .

Sand and lime mortar of different kinds are used as colours in Minimal fresco.

Thick layers of pre-coloured mortar are the distinctive tract of materic fresco.

Working in this way, the real subject of the work is the process of building the image more than the subject represented.

At times I make hand sketching, other times I use pictures from media that I use as ready-made. I post-work the images by computer graphic programs resulting in several sketches and out of them will be chosen the one for the fresco painting. Sometime the post work process results in interesting artworks and I paint digital watercolours using mouse and keyboard as brushes.

Transferring a portrait on a large format involves that the subject is never seen in its totality; the portrait is realised working on small pieces without having a full view.

Difficulties of this kind are crucial to define the nature of the image that will be built up through a process. Renaissance fresco painters solved this problem through the cartoni and spolvero technique. Cartoni technique is a procedural one -that is- to give priority to the process and to define the steps of the work before doing them.

Transferring an image on cartoni is a rigorous and limiting process. The constructive process prevail on the subject that, to some extend, becomes anonymous in spite of the fact that has a name.

I like to look at a face as a territory and painting as a process to draw a map of that territory having clear in my mind that the map is not the territory, the description is not the described.