Beach Boys
Beach Boys, 2015, 78 x 75 cm, acrylics on canvas. Below is the first sketch:
The Watcher
This was my entry for a competition launched by the village of Meano, near Brescia. … Sospesi sul Borgo di Meano, gli occhiali che sorvegliano come guardiani silenti suggeriscono un nuovo punto di vista, quello degli artisti attraverso la loro prospettiva sempre un po’ diversa rispetto alla vita di tutti i giorni. Una linea che […]
In search of intelligent trees
Barbed wire tree
The intelligence of trees
The natural world is full of surprises. Trees, for example. At the end of its first year’s growth, an apple tree has already made 17 million root hairs, with a total length of about 2 kilometres. These root hairs are not just passive filaments absorbing water and minerals. They react to the environment; they have […]
Trees, weapons of mass creation
The alchemy performed by artists, who transmute dead, leaden material into something of value, is nothing in comparison with the miracle performed by trees, that transform inorganic gases, water and minerals into vast and complex structures, giving oxygen and life to our planet. Trees are veritable weapons of mass creation. To perform this operation, trees […]
Magnetics
It would be nice to make it as a sculpture, using magnetic levitation, but it seems to be physically impossible (“Earnshaw’s theorem proves conclusively that it is not possible to levitate stably using only static, macroscopic, paramagnetic fields. The forces acting on any paramagnetic object in any combinations of gravitational, electrostatic, and magnetostatic fields will […]
In search of a title
Usually the title comes before, or at least during, the painting. This time I’m still searching for the words. Suggestions from friends: Sounding wooden (Arthur) Tree’s voice (Elisa) Is he playing Bach? (as in tree bark! Maria) Air on a tree string (Mary)
Bowl for flying fish (work in progress)
To say it with Nina Simone: Well I wish I could be like a bird in the sky how sweet it would be if I found I could fly Oh I’d soar to the sun and look down at the sea and I’d sing cos I’d know that I’d know how it feels to be […]
Self-portrait with grass
Waiting for a train that never came
Someone suggested that the title for this (in Italian) could be binario morto, which is in fact absolutely perfect. It translates as Dead-end track in English, not quite as apt. The painting is in acrylics, 2012.
The patriarch
Who is the patriarch? I think that he is someone who has managed to fathom the mysteries of spacetime and so is able to travel even the most distant corners of the universe. In four-dimensional spacetime, we can move back and forth in three of the four dimensions – those that define position – but […]
Wake for a woodworm
The real wake is not actually around the coffin, but on the lid, a very small scene. Hopefully the observer should have to look for the detail and then understands the title and subtitle. I was initially undecided between “The funeral party” and “Wake for a woodworm,” chose the first, but then my sister Kathy […]
The tyre shop miracle
This is a painting based on something that I see most days when I’m cycling in Milan. There are several tyre-change shops that have a stack of tyres outside, presumably to catch attention. It struck me that rubber is extracted from trees and transformed by an industrial procedure, and so I imagined inverting the process […]
On the intelligence of trees
A tree doesn’t exist purely as an individual organism, but it is connected with other trees through its roots. It has been seen that in a forest, a disease that begins to affect trees at one corner spreads to a degree, but then the infection may come to a halt because the trees have transmitted […]