I was never encouraged to paint as a child, quite the opposite. I attended the Brera Academy of Fine Arts very late, after studying languages and makeup, when I was already working.
I have always felt the need to express color, but I thought it was too beautiful for me to dedicate myself to it body and soul as a painter, a gift for a few, perhaps because my first drawing imprinting, during primary school, that I remember is a horrible pewter jar that the nun forced us to copy during all the hours dedicated to art.
In middle school I still remember the expression of my disconsolate drawing teacher who looked at me while I was fumbling with tempera in a vase of flowers. I felt a particular attraction for colors and art but I didn't understand where to start from.
Love at first sight arrived in Germany, in Munich where I was attending university to perfect my German. The meeting with a professor from the Academy of Fine Arts, the reading of Paul Klee and a completely different approach to art had finally opened up a world that had always been next to me, invisible.
I also started drawing at night, in the throes of a tireless frenzy. Back in Italy, I finally enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. In the following years I divided myself between the work of makeup artist and the studio
I worked for years at the Salzburg Festival and at the Verona Arena, I traveled through Europe in several theaters collaborating with directors and artists of international caliber. I have been creative director and makeup collection designer for an Italian brand for 30 years, until the color finally kidnapped me, setting me free from the commercial patterns.
Painting is a mystical experience, feeling in unison with ancestral forces outside of me and trying to express them, identifying myself. It is as if you were able to put on paper a piece of life, of the spirit that nourishes the world. Often I already see the finished work, in the sense that this impulse is so strong that it materializes finished in my mind. However, during the making, things are not quite that simple. Just a touch of different color, a particular sign and the image takes on a different meaning that I must be willing to deepen at the cost of abandoning even the native idea.
Like the pages of a diary, my canvases are superimpositions of thoughts, adventures, reflections that develop and deepen in metamorphosis with a life of its own and waiting to be ridden. I start a job but I don't know where I'm going to end up. I realized that there are no "good brushstrokes and bad brushstrokes". As in life, there is no sign that can be erased.
All the signs are good and arrive on paper because they are driven by a sometimes unconscious need. The important thing is what happens next. The signs must be understood and carried forward with courage. The intention inherent in the gesture is more important than the perfect brush.
The good brushstroke is the one that is not seen. When I see something, it means it's too much. Good brushstrokes fall into place like the pieces of a puzzle and, individually invisible, beautifully compose the symphony you hear.
Sometimes I would like to paint with my eyes closed, as if the sight distracted me from that inner charge that from the heart passes with impetus directly into the hands. There is no certainty of a good result. I start my work with an intuition, an impulse that I don't know where it will end. On the way I almost always encounter something unexpected that I have to deal with and the duel ends well only if I face it and work on it. Better insecurity, don't take anything for granted. Everything changes, always.
I have participated in some fairs and exhibitions in Italy and abroad and my work has been published in the 6 volumes of the Vittorio Sgarbi Award, in the magazine Art Now and in Art Antology IV, Madrid Edition.
Manuela Pederzolli
IG: @monella1963
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