SELF PORTRAITS Series

Universe is run by an unwritten law: something which is born at the very Big Bang moment. "The more you care about something, the less it works". It must have its roots in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: according to it you cannot observe something without having any interference. The trick to sort this impasse would be to worry less about all of our issues: things work very well when we don't care that much about.

I'm quite obsessed with my teeth: it takes me more to brush them rather than to take a shower. Recently I had to extract a wisdom tooth: despite my sadness for this and my horrific imagination (blood everywhere and umbearable pain) it took my dentist - to do the job - less than two seconds. Seriously, I just felt crack-crack-crack and the tooth was on the tray.

So, making a long story short, what I want to say is that despite my teeth commitment, something beyond my control, went wrong. It can sound like a funny story, and maybe it is, but teeth have such a strong meaning to me (so strong that over night I grind them). Anyway, after extraction, I noticed kind of a change in myself: I have the feeling to have lost some of worries about life. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

I wanted to represent that change: the past (the black fish) and the now (the red fish) are floating around a wisdom tooth and they are kind of dancing, or embracing, or even kissing. I think this what happens when you move on.

PS: the nurse asked me if I wanted to keep the tooth (she knows me quite well). I have taken it home in a tiny nice orange plastic pirate case (for baby teeth).

These two paintings of mine have got something in common, which is dualism: they are related, in a sense, to "The Fetus and The Spider" and "The Fetus and The Snake" (both in Love Series).

In the Western part of the world, we tend to use more "or" rather than "and" (see "And" artwork, Alchemy Series): I am something and I am not something else. Boundaries are, and have to be, for a safer view, strictly defined. In this two artworks, I have wanted to cancel boundaries and limits: so I have created a deeper circular and floating meaning. A meaning that being creative, and not static, is also alive. The choice of titles, wants to underline further this concept.

In "Self Portrait With Her", I cannot really say which one of the twos I am: am I the baby, or I am the Mother that embraces the baby? I feel I am both. Same concept can be seen in "The Fetus and Pelvis": I am the glittery red brightening creature full of life I am nourishing in my deep black pelvic bones.

These artworks remind me (and are related to) of one of the beautiest poems I have ever read in my whole life: "Hymn to Isis" (found in Nag Hammadi - Egypt).

"Because I am the first and the last, I am the venerated and the despised one, I am the prostitute and the saint, I am the bride and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter, I am my mother’s arms, I am the sterile one, yet my children are numerous, I am the married woman and the unmarried one, I am She who gives birth and She who has never given birth, I am the consolation for the pains of childbirth. I am the bride and the groom, And it was my man who nurtured my fertility, I am my father’s Mother, I am my husband’s sister. And he is my rejected son. Respect me always, As I am the Scandalous and the Magnificent one."

I love symbols and their unique intrinsic ability to embrace such a wide range of meanings: incisive and minimalist still they are eloquent and narrative. They are kind of keys able to open doors on other worlds, and they are like seeds: each of them cointains specificities and potentials but you don't know exactly the colour of the flowers they might develop.

There are two symbols that at this very moment I use to represent myself: a heart, and a skull, which are respectively feelings and mind (the overthinking one that never bares with me - still practicing about who's the slave and who's the master).

In "Artist's Heart" I think that a deeper part of me (a huge part of creation is unconscious), wanted to be seen: it's the wiser one, the one close to a cosmogony, represented in black and gold, which are two of the four alchemy process colours. To me black is the origin: it's the primary chaos where everything fiercely melts before getting a proper shape. It's the full potential. And gold is the excess of life, a very precious river, that emerges from that extremely fertile darkness.

In "Self Portrait" precious butterflies flies around wisdom, bringing some of the lightness that an excess of intelligence often needs.

In "Ace of Hearts", "Blooming Heart" and "Blooming Skull" there's an evolution in both colours and technique, and of course meaning as well. As it occurred with other artworks, I consider them like kind of transitional artworks, which means they do represent me but something is still missing. They are not a bold statement, but something inbetween different stages: something which is still evolving from all points of view. To me they are not milestones of awareness yet.

There's lots of red in there: over time, red to me became a feminine colour: as part of alchemical process transformation, red is kind of an energy that from potential eventually becomes action.