Katia Villa

Born in Novara, my artistic practice started taking shape in Milan by years of working in the fashion world as a stylist. Consulting for important Italian and international firms, I had come into contact with distant cultural realities such as India, Egypt and Greece. I was passionate about the use and embroidery of precious fabrics, working with ancient artisan techniques, refining my knowledge and operational skills over time.
The encounter with Buddhist culture took place in Milan, at the Gangchen Tulku Rinpoche Center founded by Lama, marking a precise moment in my mystical initiation towards the end of the 1990s.
So I applied myself in the realization of my first "thangkas", studying while also respecting criteria and parameters established over centuries for the representation of the Divine, which deeply marks my artistic apprenticeship consecrated by real inner discipline.
I then began to make my first works on fabric, as a form of prayer.
I discovered the possibility of combining it with colors of the western palette but without betraying its original spirit.
Here in Milan, where I got married and had two children, I rediscovered our culture and traditions, Greek art and medieval mysticism while also following specialization courses in drawing and classical pictorial techniques.
At this point I had decided to abandon the world of fashion definitively, to devote myself to my own original form of creativity, which summarizes the world of art that I love.
Ranging from oil to acrylic painting, religiously practicing the art of embroidery, I discovered that the images contemplated in a mystical dimension manage to take shape in the chosen and worked fabrics: the iconographies themselves suggest how I should proceed.

Technical technique 
I prefer velvet and its sensuality, combined with the roughness of restored linen.
In India as in Italy, I wander around markets and textile companies in search of precious furnishing velvets and silks that are no longer in production. The velvet itself guides me: I first treat it using special glues, creating a game with the pile fibers of the fabric and how it reacts to light, in a mix of gloss and matt, which gives rise to the image itself. Then I intervene with color and apply some gold leaf where I also want a touch of "divine light" to stand out.
In other cases, I paint on restored linen canvases, creating highlights with chalk and distributing glue on the exposed parts to make the support more resistant. After that I cut out the shape of the image and stitch it onto the velvet using small embroidery stitches. Next step is to paint the stitched image and complete it, if I feel the need, by inserting glue-treated silks to give a third dimension look to the finished work.
It is precisely this volumetric "game" of light and shadow, glossy and opaque, that gives life to my art creations