Prima Materia marks the inception of a singular painterly voice—a debut series that signals entry into the wider conversation of contemporary figuration. Inaugural, yet assured: work that arrives fluent in its own visual language.
Autodidact Practice
A Solitary Apprenticeship
Entirely self-taught, the artist stands outside the academic studio system. That distance is paradoxically generative: technique sharpened by solitude, craft acquired through direct encounter with paint. The result is work that feels both ancient in lineage and startlingly present.
Pictorial Language
Edges, Chroma, and Cadence
Edges dissolve and reassemble in the Sargent manner, but chroma—teals against corals, pearly half-tones against citrons—carries the form. Brushwork alternates between satin glazes and crisp calligraphy at mouth, lid, or fingertip: every edge a decision, every seam a thesis. The canvases breathe with a haptic intelligence, flesh built not by description but by temperature.
Motifs & Iconography
Thresholds and Poetic Gestures
Hands at the throat, a face hovering behind a veil, a mirrored axis—these gestures stage thresholds. Vulnerability and emergence recur as motifs: bodies that protect, reveal, fracture, and integrate. Each canvas functions as a visual haiku—one gesture holds the whole frame.
Interdisciplinary Inflections
From Frame to Canvas
Prima Materia is steeped in a multidisciplinary past. Years in fashion and film taught the language of framing and light; photography honed the precision of the close-up; cinema instilled pacing, silence, and the cut. These disciplines do not overlay painting—they dissolve into it, yielding a chromatic realism that reads both painterly and cinematic.
Kinship & Positioning
A Lineage Refracted
Technique anchors value. The Venetian–Baroque lineage of colorito is palpable: Titian and Veronese’s chromatic structure, Rubens and Velázquez’s pearly flesh, Sargent and Sorolla’s orchestrated edges. Yet the works are not citation but kinship: living heirs, refracted through a contemporary hand. Situated within the figurative revival yet resistant to spectacle, this voice insists on painting’s capacity for intimacy, philosophy, and depth.
Select Artworks
THRESHOLD
HAND AT THE GATE
LET ME BE SEEN (IGNITION)
SHELTER AND MEASURE
AT THE AXIS OF ME
At the Bright Center
WHAT THE FACE DEMANDS
“This painting series stages Antonioni’s psychological negative space with Bergman’s intimate psyche, lit with George Stevens’ classical grace. Each canvas is a visual haiku: one focal gesture carries the whole film.