Artist statement
Fluidity, perspective & altered emotion
In my practice, painting is strictly connected to drawing, and every work is an effort to create a fluid contrast between graphic elements and brush strokes, geometric blocks or lines and organic forms.
This contrast creates a movement on the canvas, a fluid liveliness, which I like to think of as evocative. I use the colours in function of this movement, to exaggerate its effects: the colours take form directly on the canvas, not on the retina. That’s why I take inspiration from black-and-white pictures.
The colours in my works also have the function to determinate/define the light. Whereas in reality, it is light that defines colour, on my canvas it is colour that defines light, as an opposite process.
Another important element in my study is the use of the perspective in a unusual way. I take inspiration from the photography of great directors like David Lynch or Darren Aronofsky. In their work, the use of the wide-angle lens reflects the character’s fear and confusion created through an altered emotion.
The civilized animal
I want to start from figurative painting and give the perception that reality is much more than what we see, or that the way we see it. It’s a bit like Murakami’s book and magic realism: they start from a real situation, they make you wonder in many human and philosophical ways. By doing this, they find answers in the absurd, something that could be real and less boring than a logical answer, which in fact is not an answer at all.
I think art should have a direct or indirect purpose. The indirect purpose of my work is making people wonder about their goals , their needs and their social values. About the present friction in the human kind between being civilized and being animal. I cannot think about human values as separated from our original animal condition.
At the same time, being a European “civilized” citizen entails social rules apparently far from our animal side, as something to take distance from. All my works are a subtle attempt to recreate the feeling of this emotional gap.
Teeth, nudity & water apes
If animals who show their teeth are mostly growling or defending themselves, could we be doing the same when we laugh? This is a thought I explored in my project Denti (teeth). Showing our teeth might be our (human) way to say: don't go any further. While in our society we are almost forced to smile as a first way to be polite, the smile might just as well reconnect to that fear of showing and feeling what's deep inside us.
The same fear I found whilst painting Being nude/nude beings: nude figures showing almost imploding movements in strong contrast with the geometrical space. The huge blocks in which they float symbolize the artificial cold city and the cold logic of our society. This contrasts with the fragile hesitant nature of the nude beings.
At the moment I’m working on the human’s natural attraction to water. Certain scientists think that ancestors of modern humans adapted to semi-aquatic environments. Afterwards, they developed features to survive in water (such as hairlessness, subcutaneous fat, webbed fingers, breath control). This theory is called the Aquatic Ape theory.
Modern humans show their natural/animal attraction to water in many ways, but the fact that they build swimming pools and spend their free time there is really interesting to me. Like Aquatic Apes in a jacuzzi.
Francesca Vesprini is a painter from Porto San Giorgio, Italy. She studied and lived in Fermo, Firenze, Helsinki and finished her Master in Ghent, Belgium.
Feel free to contact her:
vesprinifrancescapainter@gmail.com
