Anna Di Mauro
Strong lights and shadows looking and repeling each other
Anna Di Mauro, born in 1968 in Catania, was reborn in 2000 as an artist, finding in painting a new way of getting to know each other and tell each other. She approaches art from self-taught, finding comfort in it.
Under the guidance of a painting master, she learned increasingly suitable tools to express her emotions through shapes and colors, driven by his inspiration creative. Over the years plays with her artistic vein by experimenting with different pictorial languages up to his own current technique based on complementary colors that harmonize with each other with strong lights and shadows looking and repeling together dancing on the canvas.
For many artists, there is a key moment in their life, that moment when they fell in love with art when they saw something, that moment that motivated them to start, tell us about yours.
I started as an adult, in a troubled moment of my life… without knowing yet what was lying inside me. All it took was some basic knowledge of how to use primary and complementary colours, and it was an unexpected explosion of creativity. You know, it’s a bit like when you go out one evening and meet the man of your life.
This is how it was for me, in that difficult moment I discovered the magic of colours and… I fell in love. A passion was born that, even today, I feel alive inside.
Which one was the first painting you did and what did you feel when you saw it finished?
The first painting was born by chance, on an autumn afternoon, and at the same time, my style was unconsciously outlined. “United by nature” is the painting promoting my entire artistic journey. The surface on which I had made the sketch had a rough texture that did not allow me to spread the colour normally, so I was forced to repeatedly tap with the brushes and the related colours in order to paint. And I must say, with enormous amazement, that when I detached myself from the work to observe it from afar and contemplate the effects of light and shadows… i discovered that I had given a chromatically vibrant effect.
In your work we see from fruit still lifes to mythological creatures and fantasy references, how do you choose these themes?
So, still-lives are often compositions that contain objects that I am fond of, that belonged to my family. A set of things and/or fruits that I personally photographed with the sunset light, a light I really like because it is warm.
Talking about mythological figures instead, I do not deny you a particular attraction for mythology and all its tragic stories. And in the end, the “fantasy” references you ask me about certainly refer to:
– The statues that are transformed “from marble into human flesh”, where an evident need for transformation is expressed (perhaps unconsciously it is my own), and a passage “from shadow to light”;
– To the embrace between two different elements: the sea and the earth, gold and silver. Here the desire to send a message of universal Love was strong. The embrace intended between two people who love each other, between two people who are friends…
– To female nudes set in history and architecture: subjects were chosen because I firmly believe in the strength of all of us women. So I can say that the themes in all of my paintings represent “me”.
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My aim is to give beauty, to be able to rouse emotions that
shake the soul, so I think that we must want the impossible
for the impossible to happen.
Have you been inspired by the work of another artist or has it influenced you in any way?
The only painter who has always attracted me for his lights and shadows is Michelangelo Merisi “il Caravaggio”. It is clear that the admiration of his style is not an attempt to imitate or get closer to his pictorial genius, but rather a feeling of attraction for the alternation of shadows and lights.
Were you clear from the beginning how you were going to work or did you try different techniques until you found the most comfortable one for you?
As I said before, I discovered it by experimenting but once i defined this style I never experimented with other techniques because I really like working with oil colours.
A characteristic element of your paintings are the masks, how did you incorporate them into your work?
I was attracted by masks for a period of my life, as you will see in previous and subsequent works. Probably, regardless of the moment in which I chose them as subjects, I believe that we all wear them to a certain extent. But they do not necessarily have to mean falsehood or deception. For example, I am a reserved, non-intrusive and partly shy person… so they can represent shyness, fear of exposing oneself and so on.
But the strange thing, which I reveal in this interview, and which I have never confessed to anyone, is that… some of the paintings with the masks were “precognitive subjects” of a part of my life.
Let’s say that in some way they anticipated and marked the timing of my experience. And believe me, I only noticed it after the events happened… then looking at them again. It happens to me, still in some canvases, to anticipate events not yet experienced and/or seen.
For Anna, what is art?
It is life, it is beauty, it is making the past and the future present, it is rejoicing in the hope of giving and provoking
emotions in people, it is getting moved by the smell of colours and turpentine, it is feeling the “butterflies in the
stomach” when I want to realise an idea, it’s flying with my imagination in front of a blank canvas, it’s feeling like a
mother when I’m about to put a new “creature” on a canvas.
Is everything valid in art?
Not everything. I believe that everyone is free to express their art and their creativity. But today, I notice an excessive “changing” of one’s style to conform to what is most requested on the market. A friend of mine once told me: “why don’t you change your style since at the moment something is hot a certain style on the market”. My answer was: “I could change, only if I feel it inside “the change”, certainly not due to a market request”. Art is the full expression of myself.
What has been the biggest challenge in your career?
Now. The year 2022-2023 represents a turning point. I’ve abandoned some job certainties because I believe with all my heart in my creativity.
If your paintings could talk, what would they say about you?
Everything. At a personal exhibition that I held last year, a friend of mine who hadn’t seen all my paintings yet, came to visit me. She saw them, almost all together, on that occasion. Well, during her visit, she began her journey by observing them one by one, but I saw that she lingered longer in one of them. Intrigued, I joined her. And… I saw that she was crying. I asked her if she was okay. She replied that in that particular painting, she saw all my suffering. Believe me, it was wonderful for me to see how I managed to touch her soul. Be able to rouse emotions is the most beautiful thing for a creative dreamer like me.
Are all the facets of Anna reflected in the paintings?
I am totally inside all my paintings, because like a mother they are generated within me by moods, by experiences, to then be conceived as living creatures.
End with a phrase that you like a lot
My aim is to give beauty, to be able to rouse emotions that shake the soul, so I think that we must want the impossible for the impossible to happen.
Entrevista concedida a AGAPHE el 16 de Marzo del 2023
And then, a person is capable
Interesting moment
Thanks. Very useful info