From the earliest years of age, I have tried to make art in all ways, sculpting with the earth, with plasticine, with clay, with the crumb of bread; I spontaneously painted on the walls and drew everywhere. For many years then, my rational thinking has done everything to hinder the true artistic nature, aware of the fact that the life of an artist is much more difficult than a "normal" person. So in 2005 I enrolled in an agricultural technical institute, listening to my sensitivity towards botanical life and agriculture, which I still practice as a secondary hobby. Despite this, I never stopped making art; in fact, during the years of maturity, I started painting again and I found within myself my true artistic vein which probably descends from my grandparents and uncles, stonecutters / sculptors that I had in my family from the end of the 19th century onwards. So in 2008 I started working stone as a stonemason, copying the drawings of the old masters and acquiring an ancient technique full of charm and mystery. Nowadays I am the only one in my small town to continue the ancient tradition of local stone sculptors. In 2011, after graduating in agriculture and an ever-growing passion for stone constructions, I therefore chose to enroll in the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic of Bari, graduating with a thesis on urban and architectural restoration. During the years of university education I continued to learn self-taught and to perfect my knowledge on the composition of forms, on oil painting and in the various sculptural techniques (wood, clay, limestone and marble). The fact of not having attended an academy allowed me to experience art with simplicity, freedom and with a sense of "continuous discovery" which is still the flame that shines in my heart. I would not change anything in my path. My training continues even now and will continue throughout my life, because in 2017, after a very difficult period on an emotional level, art was my only lifeline and it will be until the end of my days. My activity as an artist and architect continues, albeit with great economic costs and a lot of effort, but I am always confident that everything will be fine and the efforts will be rewarded one day. In November 2019 I attended the master in MADI Digital Architecture at the IUAV University of Venice and this allowed me to innovate and implement my wealth of knowledge by inserting professional-level computer graphics in the composition and realization of my works. My work as an artist and architect therefore continues unabated in a studio / atelier that I am building piece by piece, day after day with effort and boundless love. Every morning, until late in the evening, I produce something, put aside disappointments and focus on the few victories with perseverance, then, I carry on my life mission and that is to live an existence with art and for art in the its three main forms: painting, sculpture and architecture with everything that can be used to create new forms of art with a true and profound meaning which, however, are children of tradition and know-how.
My works carry my life experiences and my sensibilities in their womb; I work in a purely figurative field, linking myself to a "classic" discourse of composition and forms. Since 2017, my surrealist vein appears in my latest works; then metaphysical-style mannequins appear which are the protagonists of imaginary scenes. I constantly study the great masters of Renaissance and modern art, looking for elements that could be re-proposed in a contemporary key within my paintings. In addition to this, I paint what I "feel" and the emotions of the moment, trying to give the work that value of "authentic uniqueness" that no industrial object can ever have. I have also chosen to often represent the mannequin, because it fully symbolizes the essence of modern man, capable of being used by the powerful and objects to serve a consumer society that sometimes seems much more surreal than my own canvases.
As far as sculpture is concerned, in addition to probing the various aspects of the portrait of ordinary people (old people, children, in love), in recent months, my research aims to create an artistic object that has the appearance of a "painting" but which is harmonious union of the three main arts. To do this, I use the techniques of architectural composition as an ordering element and then I work on the subjects using two-dimensionality (painting as the background of the painting) and three-dimensionality (small stone sculptures that come out of the painting). I called these works with a very geometric and contemporary design "dynamic compositions", because despite the static nature of the sculpture, I want to give the observer an idea of movement.
