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There is a particular kind of comfort that comes from knowing how a material will behave.

I know how ink will travel across paper, how far I can encourage it before it begins to make its own decisions. I know, albeit intuitively, when to intervene and when to leave it alone. I know what soft pastel can bring afterwards: density, bold colors, earth against water. There will never be complete certainty, as ink would never allow that, but there is definitely familiarity.

For some time now, this conversation between ink, pastel and paper has been at the center of my work. It has given me a language I recognize as my own. And perhaps inevitably, it has created a comfort zone, a situation I do not particularly appreciate for longer than I should, in any aspect of my life. I am feeling now the desire to explore and evolve.

Over the past months, unfamiliar items have begun appearing in my studio. Intaglio inks. Textured papers. Stencils and tools that might introduce new ways of making a mark. Some have been bought with a precise experiment in mind and others simply because something about them made me curious. They now sit beside the mediums I know well, waiting.

There is something contradictory about reaching greater confidence in a technique and, almost at the same moment, wanting to introduce uncertainty again. You spend years learning what a material can do, developing gestures and instincts, understanding which accidents to keep and which ones can be avoided. Then one day the very fluency you have worked towards makes you wonder what other possibilities could emerge in the studio. And then the desire for the unknown asserts itself.

When the surface becomes familiar

Paper is the third participant in the conversation with ink and pastel. It is tempting to think of a substrate as neutral – the place where the painting happens – but paper is very much alive. It absorbs. It buckles (still more often than I would like). Its fibers receive liquid, slow it, pull it outward. Its weight and texture determine how much water it will tolerate and how the pigments settle. The surface answers back.

I have recently been testing different papers. A seemingly modest change in texture or absorbency can alter the entire sequence of decisions that follows. This exploration is utterly fascinating. The surface does not merely receive the image passively; it contributes to what the image will become.And yet another question has been sitting beside these experiments for considerably longer. It is advice friends, curators, and galleries have been giving me relentlessly.

I need to paint bigger.

What happens to a gesture when it has further to travel?

My recent works have often been intimate in scale. The Arborescence artworks, for example, are 31 x 31 cm. I like the concentration it requires. Within a relatively small field, every gesture matters. And increased control inevitably follows.

But I have known for some time that I want to understand what happens when the field expands.

Painting larger changes the energy of both making and looking.

A gesture made across thirty centimeters is performed primarily by the hand and wrist. Give that gesture a meter and the body acts differently. The arm travels and the shoulder engages. There is more room for speed, for boldness. Scale changes the physical act of painting. But size and scale are not necessarily the same thing. A small painting can contain an extraordinary sense of space, while a large one can somehow remain small. Simply enlarging my gestures would therefore miss the point. I am curious to see what happens to the relationships within the painting when there is suddenly much more room.

It certainly changes the viewer’s experience too. A small work asks you to approach it. A larger painting is already there, sharing your space. You have to deal with it differently. I have become increasingly curious about that physical presence. My encounter earlier this summer with Anselm Kiefer’s The Women Alchemists at Palazzo Reale in Milan intensified some of these thoughts. It is not about imitating monumentality, which can sometimes feel performative. I believe it is closer to permission: the realization that material, scale and thought can reinforce each other, and that ambition in painting can be both intellectual and physical.

Since then, scale has become harder to postpone. A recent conversation about my work with a curator gave the idea a more immediate form. What would happen if the next surface were not thirty-one centimeters high, but close to one hundred? I might need a push, as « someday » is a wonderfully comfortable deadline.

Canvas is not large paper

My first instinct has been to take what I already do and simply enlarge it.  A few years ago, I was painting on A2 sheets of paper and enjoying the process. However, an effect that feels effortless and precious at 31 x 31 cm may become artificial or irrelevant when reproduced at three times the scale.

As I also consider canvas, it does present another set of conditions. A traditionally primed surface can resist liquid. Ink that would sink into paper will sit on top, run or pool. Would I have to abandon the wonderful fluidity of ink? Then I realize it is not about the medium nor the substrate but about the language. And the challenge becomes: how can I translate my artistic language on a larger scale? I have begun researching linen and cotton canvases, different grounds and degrees of absorbency. I am curious about surfaces that might allow ink to retain some of the diffusion I love on paper without pretending that canvas and paper are interchangeable. At the same time, the possibilities of transparent layers and glacis intrigue me. The pastel could return. I do not yet know how these things will behave together. The contrast might be interesting: absorbed ink, luminous translucent passages, soft pastel sitting weightlessly above them. Fluidity interrupted by a mark unmistakably made by the hand.

Whether this will work remains to be seen, and this is precisely why it is worth exploring. I think here of Sigmar Polke, a painter whose work has always left me in awe, and of his extraordinary curiosity towards materials. Patterned fabrics, resins and lacquers, silver compounds, historical pigments, even meteorite dust found their way into his work. He seemed willing to try almost anything and there is something wonderfully free in that approach.

Becoming a beginner again

There is a peculiar pleasure in buying a material whose behavior you do not yet understand. The AKUA Intaglio inks currently waiting in my studio are a small example. They belong to the world of printmaking, and I am interested in what happens when I integrate them without feeling obliged to use them in the most conventional way. Patterns and stencils introduce the prospect of repetition and structure into works that have often relied on organic movement.

Some experiments will probably produce nothing worth keeping. The sentence is easy to write but considerably harder to accept in the studio. When you know a technique well enough to produce work you consider resolved, experimentation comes at a cost. You temporarily exchange competence for awkwardness. Something that looked extraordinary in your imagination may become uninteresting once it exists. A new material may refuse to do the thing you bought it for.

Yet failure in the studio is useful. I would argue it is necessary, as part of the journey. And occasionally, an unsuccessful experiment contains a tiny event – a granulation, a mark, an unexpected transparency – that fuels new ideas and opens a new direction.

What, then, makes a painting ours?

If I change the substrate, the scale and eventually perhaps the technique, will the work still be mine?

An artistic language is not summarized by the tools through which it emerges. And what I want to preserve lies far deeper than substrate and technique. There is color, certainly. The core and soul of my practice. There is movement, energy, gesture. There is the attraction of a landscape without the need to describe it literally.

There is the tension between intention and accident that has accompanied my work for years. I want to begin a painting with an idea without knowing exactly what the finished image will look like. If I can see the entire painting before making it, I am not sure I would ever engage in the process. And increasingly, there is storytelling. I am interested in the way we transform places, experiences, and memories into stories.

None of that requires a particular size. None of that requires paper. And maybe changing materials is one way of finding out which parts of a practice were fundamental, and which were simply habits.

A larger field

For now, the new materials remain experiments. I do not know whether canvas will replace paper, and I do not particularly want it to. The intimacy of paper still interests me. The Arborescence series belongs to it, and there are things I can do on paper that I may never want to translate elsewhere.

Coexistence seems more interesting to me than replacement. A small work can whisper something that would become absurd if shouted across a meter of canvas. A large painting can ask the body to participate in ways that a small one cannot.

Perhaps the next stage is simply making the field wider. More space for the gesture to travel. More materials and new techniques capable of surprising me. More opportunities for discovery. There is an appealing uncertainty in this. For the moment, I do not need to know exactly where those possibilities will lead. I only need to give them enough room.

I rarely photograph entire paintings at exhibitions. Someone else has already photographed them better. Exhibition catalogues and professional photographers preserve the whole. What interests me are the details: the ones that make me stop, the ones that feel almost private. They reveal less about the artist than they do about the person looking.

Walking through The Women Alchemists at Palazzo Reale in Milan, I found myself drawn again and again to fragments: the curve of a silhouette, a plant emerging from a woman’s chest, a veil of verdigris against gold. They were details that moved me and that I remember more than the dimensions of the artworks themselves.

Perhaps that is what great exhibitions do. They do not ask us to remember everything. They leave each of us with something different.

I spent the longest time in front of Alethea Talbot Howard. She stands against a gold background, her face lifted towards the sky, somewhere between ecstasy and contemplation, a plant growing from her chest as if knowledge itself had taken root within her. It is a painting of extraordinary stillness and monumental proportions, yet it feels unexpectedly intimate. I found myself wondering about the longing this woman must have carried across the centuries. She did not ask to be understood. She simply asked me to stay.

Another artwork, Leona Constantia, has remained with me for different reasons. Her body echoes the shape of the sunflower she holds, immersed in a sea of reds and greens interrupted by slashes of gold. Looking at it, I stopped seeing a woman holding a flower. I saw a woman becoming one.

Transformation is everywhere in Kiefer’s universe.

Gold is not ornament. It is transformation made visible. It alters the physical presence of the work. It catches the light, expands the space and makes the paintings merge with the surrounding architecture. Yet what stayed with me was not gold itself, but what it represented: the possibility that matter can become something else. That stories can find another language. That history can become living presence.

I left the exhibition thinking less about painting than about meaning.

As artists, it is easy to become preoccupied with composition, color or technique. Kiefer reminded me that technique serves an idea, never the other way around. His paintings are rooted in history, philosophy, mythology and literature. They are dense because they are nourished by decades of reading, questioning and thinking. Standing in front of them, I realized that the question is not whether a painting is beautiful. The question is whether it carries a necessity. I do not want to paint like Anselm Kiefer. Nor do I believe that is what great artists ask of us. I want to paint with greater necessity. I left Palazzo Reale with dozens of photographs on my phone. Almost all of them are close-ups and details. That feels appropriate. The whole exhibition belongs to Anselm Kiefer. The details I chose now belong, in some small way, to my own story.

Perhaps that is what every important exhibition leaves us with: not answers, but better questions, questions that continue their quiet work in the studio long after the museum doors have closed.

Before ink, there were pastels.

I loved them for their color, the raw, saturated pigment you could push and blend with your fingers. Pastels are sensorial in a way few mediums are, there is something almost primal about them. No brush between you and the surface, just pigment and skin. I studied with American masters at the Pastel Society of America in New York City, where I would eventually become an associate signature painter. It was there, in exhilarating workshops, that I first saw ink used not as a rival to pastel but as its foundation, an underlayer laid down before the color arrives, to give it even more depth and character. I did not think much of it at the time. It seemed like a technique among many others, a trick borrowed to make pastel behave differently.

Until that summer afternoon in New York.

It was a scorching day, the kind of Manhattan heat that melts on you and refuses to leave. I had a sheet of paper on the floor, ArtSpectrum Colourfix, a paper built for pastel but forgiving enough to hold liquids.  I had a bowl of water beside me, there might have been a few ice cubes floating in it, and without much thought, I threw a splash of it across the sheet. Then I took a pipette of ink and let it fall. The moment the ink hit the wet paper, thunder and lightning hit inside me. A flower fused into being, bloomed wild and free, the way ink does when it meets water on its own terms, spreading and pulling and finding shapes no hand could have planned.

It was love. Immediate, imperious, demanding, and it has not left me since.

What I could not have explained then, but understand now, is why that moment struck so hard. Pastel is a medium of control. You choose the pressure, the direction, the blend, and the pigment does more or less what you ask of it. Ink on wet paper does not ask permission. It moves according to its own logic, and the artist’s mission shifts from directing to responding. You place the water, making the paper lusciously shiny. You release the ink. And then you watch, and you decide, in real time, whether what is happening is something to interrupt or to let continue.

Pastel, I now think, suited - and maybe still does - a particular version of me: the version that plans, curates, manages perception for a living. Every day, my work asks me to control how people move through a space, what they notice first and what a given color subconsciously signals. I am good at this, and I have built a career on it. And pastel lets me bring that same instinct into the studio. Decide, adjust, refine, decide again.

Ink refuses that instinct entirely. It does not care what I intended. It asks me to release something and trust it before I know how it will land, which, for someone whose professional life is built on controlling outcomes, is not a natural state. It is closer to a discipline I am still learning than a talent I already possess. Letting go, for me, is not effortless. It is a wish before it is a practice, an objective before it is a skill, and on the good days, when the water and the pigment find something I could not have planned, it becomes, for a brief moment, an art in itself.

In hindsight, that distinction between making a mark and releasing one, turned out to be the real subject of my practice. But the truth is, my relationship with ink did not begin that afternoon. It only revealed itself in a very memorable way.

Long before pastels, before any formal training, there was a pen and a notebook. As a child, I filled pages compulsively. My parents could take me to restaurants or to visit their friends. As long as I had a stack a paper, I could blissfully keep myself occupied. Drawing and later writing, became as natural as breathing. One art used marks, the other used words, but both were pen to paper, both were ink finding its way across a white surface. That sultry afternoon in New York simply reminded me of something I had always known and had, for a while, forgotten in the busyness of corporate life: that ink, in whatever form it takes, has always been my first language. Today, that instinct lives in two places at once. It exists on paper, in ink and water, in paintings of landscapes at the edge of abstraction. And it lives in words, in the writing I do alongside the painting, quietly, consistently, the way I have since childhood, long before either practice had a name or an audience.

I paint with ink. I think with words.

I have said that sentence for a while now, mostly to myself, without always tracing it back to its origin. But it started long before that afternoon on the floor. It started with a child and a pen, and it simply took decades, and a particularly hot day in Manhattan, to remember what had been true the whole time. I am not sure pastel and I are finished with each other. I doubt any medium that shaped you for years fully lets go. And there is still color in me that wants blending, fingers on pigment and that older, warmer intimacy. But ink asks something different of me. It asks me to trust what I cannot entirely direct. Paper first. Life, I am still working on.

Over the past few months, I have been working on a series of paintings of solitary trees. At first glance, this may look like repetition. After all, the same motif keeps reappearing. The same trunk, the same branches, the same presence occupying the surface of the paper. But the longer I work on the series, the more I realize that the tree is not really the subject.

Many artists return to the same motif throughout their careers. From the outside, this can seem limiting. Why paint the same thing again when there are so many other possibilities? Yet perhaps a recurring subject is less a destination than a point of departure. By holding one element relatively constant, other questions become more visible.

This is certainly how I experience my trees. They allow me to focus on movement, color, rhythm, and atmosphere. A subtle shift in palette can transform the emotional temperature of a painting. A change in the movement of branches can alter its energy. The tree remains recognizable of course, but the painting becomes something else.

The series has also changed the way I look at trees themselves.The more time I spend painting them, the less I see them as elements of a landscape. They begin to resemble characters. Not symbols or metaphors, but individuals. Like people, trees carry traces of their history. Their silhouettes bear the marks of storms, droughts, seasons of growth, and years of adaptation. Sounds familiar?

In fact, what interests me is not the tree as an object, but what it allows me to see. And this may be why I keep returning to the same trees. Each painting reveals something I had not quite noticed before: how colors fuse and merge, how the negative space between branches creates a nest or a window to see beyond. And, perhaps, how I keep growing as an artist, one tree at a time. For now, that seems reason enough to continue.

People usually encounter artworks in their final form: framed, lit, carefully presented in a gallery or posted online. By the time a painting appears on Instagram or enters an exhibition, most traces of uncertainty have disappeared. The work looks resolved, intentional, almost effortless.

What visitors rarely see is everything that came before.

An artist’s studio is filled with failed works, warped paper, abandoned attempts, and endless repetition. Especially when working with ink on paper, things can go wrong very quickly. Too much water buckles the surface. One accidental mark can ruin the entire balance of a composition. Sometimes a painting collapses in a matter of seconds.

There are stacks of works that never leave the studio, let alone make it onto social media.

And then there is the repetition nobody talks about: testing the same gesture over and over, adjusting tones, flattening paper, starting again. I believe much contemporary painting is built through repetition and small adjustments rather than sudden inspiration.

Doubt is part of the artistic process too. Not necessarily dramatic, soul-searching doubt, but a constant questioning: is it finished? Is it working? Am I repeating myself, or bringing something new to the conversation?

What fascinates me today is the growing gap between studio reality and social media. Online, artworks appear as clean, finished objects, accompanied by polished studio photographs and seamless narratives of creativity. The hesitations, failed attempts, and technical frustrations that I am sure other artists experience too, are mostly edited out.

To my mind, that invisible side is a fundamental part of the work. A painting is not only the final image people see. It also contains all the failed attempts, adjustments, and uncertainties that made its existence possible. Perhaps that is what gives an artwork its presence in the end: not perfection, but everything it survived before reaching the wall.

There is something quietly disorienting about exhibiting art in a group show. Paintings line the walls in a kind of visual conversation. Sometimes harmonious, often not. Styles collide, intentions overlap or drift apart. You move through the space not only as an artist, but as a viewer with your own instincts and preferences.

Some works draw you in immediately. Others leave you untouched, even resistant. Then comes the more curious moment: watching the audience. A piece you barely noticed becomes the center of admiration. Another, which deeply resonated with you, barely registers. Taste reveals itself as unpredictable, shifting from one viewer to the next.

Standing near your own work can feel like standing beside a version of yourself that no longer belongs to you. People approach, pause, hesitate or simply walk past without slowing. That small gesture, walking past, can sting more than expected. It is subtle, but it lands.

And yet, this is part of exhibiting art. To show your work is to release control. The piece enters a shared space where it must speak on its own, where it may be misunderstood, overlooked, or occasionally, truly seen. None of these outcomes cancels the others. None of them defines the work entirely.

Over time, the discomfort softens, though it will probably never disappear. It becomes a kind of awareness: that creating art is not only about making something, but also allowing it to exist among other voices, other sensibilities. Group exhibitions, for all their unevenness, offer a necessary reminder. Your work does not need to belong everywhere. It only needs to exist, fully and honestly, where it stands. And in doing so, it finds its kindred spirits and, quietly, so do you.

I have a deep, almost visceral connection with paper. I read physical books, savoring that unmistakable scent of aging pages, and even the crisp aroma of fresh ink in new editions. I still write by hand from time to time, though I admit the computer offers unmatched flexibility. But when it comes to painting, paper remains my true home. I suppose you could call me a “papivore,” as the French would say.

Canvas never quite worked for me. It does not invite the same playfulness. Paper, on the other hand, embraces pastels (once my addiction) and now inks, my current obsession. It absorbs, reacts, and surprises. I feel there can be a real creative dialogue with paper that does respond to your proposals and trials. Sometimes in the most unexpected way…

Yet painting on paper comes with its challenges. Even heavy 600g sheets can buckle under moisture. And let’s be honest, nothing undermines a piece faster than warped paper. Presentation matters as much as technique in art shows and to collectors.

Recently, I discovered the work of Kim Knoll, an inspiring American artist who also works extensively on paper, even at large scale. Her online classes, Flatten Works on Paper and Mount Paper to Panel, are incredibly insightful. The instructions are clear, practical, and easy to follow. There is also something wonderfully calming about her delivery. It feels like joining her for a meditative conversation in her quiet, bright studio. If you are serious about improving your process, I strongly recommend visiting her website and exploring her courses: www.kimknoll.com.

Art is a journey shaped by encounters, sometimes virtual ones. What excites me most is that there is always something new to learn, refine, and explore. That sense of endless discovery is what keeps the creative fire alive.

There are seasons - external and internal - when everything slows down. Late winter lingers longer than expected. Buds stay tight. Air remains cold. And creativity settles into its own stillness, mirroring the landscape. This creative plateau is easy to mistake for a problem, something to push through or fix. But not everything needs urgency. Some things simply need time.

The familiar world - a room, a street, a city - becomes the landscape of waiting. And within that waiting, subtle shifts begin. A different shade of light in the sky as you leave work. A sentence emerging at the oddest moments, captured on a scrap of paper. A scent that suddenly makes you feel alive again. Nothing dramatic, just small signs that something is changing.

Creativity is not a straight line; it is a flow, a tide, a season. It rises when it is ready, the same way the first crocus pushes through cold ground when winter finally surrenders. The bloom always arrives eventually, on its own time.

To acknowledge a plateau is to honor the cycle. To trust that stillness has its own work to do. The end of winter is not the absence of growth; it is the quiet preparation for it. Patience becomes part of the art. Patience is one of the most precious virtues to cherish as an artist.

Fresh from my exhibitions in Italy - most recently the group show “Little Treasures,” curated by Paola Trevisan – I have been reflecting on how deeply the staging of art influences the way we experience it. A well-composed exhibition doesn’t simply display artworks; it choreographs emotion, guides perception, and sets the tone for how a viewer enters the world of the artist. And as I move between painting and scenography, between the quiet concentration of the studio and the precise choreography of luxury brand environments, I’m reminded that the same principles apply to the world of luxury retail design.

Whether in a gallery in Bologna or inside my own minimalist gold boutique in Dubai, the atmosphere surrounding an object is often as significant as the object itself. Luxury brands sometimes forget this, focusing on product visibility rather than emotional resonance. Yet staging - true staging - can elevate a space from transactional to transformative.

The first step into any environment sets its emotional temperature. In galleries, those initial moments are crafted with intention: a soft transition, a subtle reveal, an invitation to slow down. Luxury boutiques can benefit from adopting this approach. When a client enters, they should feel gently guided into a different state of mind, one marked by curiosity, calm, and anticipation. In Dubai, I designed the boutique so the golden glow of the space greets visitors before anything else does, creating a sense of quiet immersion rather than immediate display.

Lighting, too, becomes a sculptural tool rather than a functional necessity. In exhibition design, lighting is chosen not simply to illuminate, but to shape the mood, highlight textures, and guide the viewer’s gaze. A similar strategy in luxury retail scenography transforms products from mere objects into focal points with presence and story. Soft contrasts, directional beams, and controlled shadows build a sense of intimacy, one of the core elements of contemporary luxury brand experience.

Movement within the space is another essential dimension. Art exhibitions are never static; they are spatial narratives. Their structure encourages a certain rhythm: moments of pause, unexpected turns, intentional distances between artworks. Translating this to retail allows a brand to create a journey rather than a showroom. Instead of lining items evenly along walls, products become characters within a story. Visitors move through the boutique as though reading a visual chapter, each section revealing a new tone or emotion.

Editing plays a decisive role in both fine art and high-end design. In a world overwhelmed with visual noise, restraint has become a form of luxury. The most powerful spaces are often the most curated. By embracing minimalism - minimalism with intention, not austerity - brands allow craftsmanship to breathe. This belief guided the design of the Dubai boutique; although entirely cloaked in warm metallic tones, the space remains calm and refined, a setting that glows rather than shouts. It is proof that opulence and simplicity are not opposites but partners.

Materials also influence how a space communicates. In exhibitions, surfaces are chosen with precision: matte walls to soften contrast, textured elements to ground the viewer, architectural lines to give direction. The same material intelligence is essential in luxury retail design. Textures, colors, and finishes should speak to each other, creating subtle sensory connections that enhance the emotional depth of the environment.

One of the most overlooked aspects of both art and luxury retail is the value of ephemerality. Exhibitions are temporary, yet their impact can be long-lasting. Luxury brands that embrace seasonal scenography, shifting palettes, or subtle atmospheric changes keep their spaces alive. Clients notice this sense of evolution, even subconsciously. It signals vitality, creativity, and contemporary relevance.

And in the age of social media, photogenic environments are not created through spectacle but through intention. Clear compositions, strong focal points, and uncluttered spatial breathing room naturally result in spaces that photograph beautifully. When a boutique is thoughtfully staged, it becomes visually cohesive from every angle, encouraging organic sharing and reinforcing brand identity across digital platforms.

In the end, luxury brands have much to learn from the discipline of fine art staging. Curators like Paola Trevisan, who frame artworks with such clarity and sensitivity, remind us that atmosphere is an art form in itself. When brands adopt this curatorial mindset - one built on emotion, narrative, and material intelligence - retail becomes more than a place of purchase. It becomes a world to step into, an experience to remember, and a story to return to.

This autumn has been one of the most creatively intense and fulfilling periods of my career so far. I am currently preparing for two upcoming group art exhibitions in Italy: “When They See Us” in Milan and “Little Treasures” in Bologna, both opening this November. Each show represents a distinct chapter in my artistic journey and a new opportunity for growth as a contemporary artist.

The first exhibition, “When They See Us” in Milan, has been a true learning curve. For the first time, I created work on commission, responding directly to a curatorial theme that was not part of my usual visual language or areas of exploration. I wanted to honor the curator’s vision while staying true to my own artistic identity - a balance that required research, patience, and a willingness to step outside my comfort zone.

Developing two new pieces specifically for this show was both challenging and invigorating. The process led me into new territory, conceptually, technically, and emotionally. I spent weeks exploring ideas, experimenting with materials, and allowing unfamiliar concepts to guide me toward unexpected outcomes.

At times, the process was difficult. I had to confront my own resistance to “working to a brief.” Perhaps that reluctance stems from the fact that, in my day job as a scenographer, I already work to briefs and I’ve always seen art as the space where I can express myself without external constraints. Yet, somewhere in that discomfort, I found freedom. The act of translating another’s theme into my own language opened doors I didn’t know existed. Now, looking at the finished works, I feel a profound sense of growth not just in what I created, but in who I became while creating it. This exhibition reminded me that artistic evolution often happens when we allow ourselves to be stretched beyond what feels natural.

The second exhibition, “Little Treasures” in Bologna, curated by the ever-inspiring Paola Trevisan, feels like a joyful reunion. I was fortunate to take part in the 2024 edition, and I am thrilled to return this year.

This exhibition has a unique format, with each artist presenting a collection of small-format artworks. While the scale may be intimate, the creative challenge is anything but small. Working on a reduced surface demands precision, focus, and clarity of intent. Every mark counts! I find this limitation incredibly stimulating. Under Paola Trevisan’s thoughtful curatorial guidance, the show always becomes more than a collection of small works; it becomes a dialogue of voices united by shared passion.

As November approaches, my studio is alive with anticipation. Preparing for two exhibitions at once has reminded me that artistic growth thrives on contrast, between the conceptual rigor of “When They See Us” and the joyful experimentation of “Little Treasures.”

Both experiences affirm a truth I hold dear: art is not static. It moves, evolves, and demands that we evolve with it. And so, as I put the finishing touches on these new works, I feel immense gratitude: for the curators who challenge and inspire, for the community of artists who share the journey, and for the opportunity to continue growing through the act of creation.