Yearly Recap

After having to watch endless footage of yearly football and music charts on tv I thought I'd look back at my working year too !

2011 opened on a faux pas, the silly idea of taking part into a televised juried show that turned up to be cheesy and inconsequential. The experience though did me good: I learned to consider more carefully what makes sense and what is irrelevant if not damaging for my working practice, and furthermore it made me generally reconsider the theme of juries that I then addressed in some paintings.

My paintings were shown in several occasions this year. I started a good working relationship with Fine Art Consultancy, a dealership based in London that has brought me to the 20/21 International Art Fair and the Affordable Art Fair ( Battersea and Hampstead editions) as well as organising a couple of selected guests events to introduce me to their clientele. All these resulted in very encouraging sales and good feedback. On the Italian front I have shown again with Ellearte in Palermo and again I can report interest and sales.









I haven't been painting much during the summer but I worked on a very large personal piece that has whet my appetite for working on a larger scale, albeit the London-size of my studio.










In only took part in two open shows this year, both rather prestigious although very different. The Threadneedle Prize show was held in September at the Mall Galleries in London and was a result of a gruesome selection. My small painting, Studu for Committee, was chosen among the 52 finalists among 4350 entries.

In October one of my self portraits was selected for the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Competition held in the ample and luminous King's Place Gallery in London. It was and interesting and varied show with works by very prestigious painters.


In November I was featured in a lengthy article on The Artist magazine, american edition. Eight pages with many images and text, opening with a full page image of Geneva ( please email me if you would like a PDF copy of the article). The magazine has also selected my painting Mohican I as a finalist in their yearly portrait competition.

Teaching has been a very rewarding activity that I kept up for the whole year. Aside from some very pleasant days with a warm and intelligent group of people, articulating my toughts about painting has helped me progress in my work.
My website and blog together this year have had 66.288 page loads, a staggering number for which I am both proud and ashamed given my difficulties at writing in a passable English.

The last months of this year have seen me working on a new series of paintings, Wrap, that have had good reception and sales when they were shown. In the near future I plan to keep working on this theme and I am planning to show them in London, Sicily and hopefully in Rome at the end of the year. I also have an extremely interesting and cool project for an art residency but it is taking forever to get a final decision from the organisation involved, I'll keep you posted.

Ending on a sad and nostalgic note, this summer I lost Topsy, my studio companion, and I miss her every day.