1 When did you start to make art?

At the age of 8 or maybe 7

2 How did you evolve into a professional artist?

In a very natural way

3 What drove you to make art as a professional vocation?

Even when I was a child, my maths teacher used to say I was wasting my time, always scribbling and flicking through arts catalogues, instead of paying proper attention to the class and studying my school text books. This was not entirely true, but those who did not interpret my behaviour as a response to an uncontrollable passion in life, dismissed it as lack of effort and commitment on my part.
My passion eventually prompted me to decide to become a painter, and
it is basically the reason why I am a painter now.

4 Explain your inspiration?

Starting a new painting is like moving in a particular direction. Painting is like going on a journey, sometimes full of adventures, which can take you to totally unexpected places. Oliver Cromwell said that "nobody goes as far as someone who doesn't know where he's going". This may be true, however paradoxical it seems.

5 In what way does your inspiration transform into ideas?

I can only say how I interpret my work as a painter. Hopefully, this will help people to understand my work better, too.
… It's like when you go to the cinema and the film has already started, so you start watching without understanding exactly what is going on … trying to pick up the plot from the setting and the characters as they appear on the screen, without knowing whether they are the main characters, or just walk-on parts; in fact, without even knowing if the film has only just started, or is coming to an end.
When you think about it, everyone enters life when the show has already begun. We all do our best, in the time we have available, to try to understand the meaning of our own particular story.

6 From Ideas to production of art – how? And why?

Painting is a strange thing. If you let it become too intellectual it loses its identity. Painting is not expressed by what it represents: it is a thing that is made. I have always loved Caravaggio very much, not to imitate him, but to understand the movements of his way of painting

7 Could your ideas be portrayed in any other medium? If so which?

There are various reasons why a young man may choose to take up the challenge of painting, poetry or music. A natural talent for writing, a natural ear for music, or hands that have a natural ability to draw can help you take that first step;  but this does not, in itself, determine whether you will become a painter, poet or musician. 

Talent is a precious tool for anyone who has something original to say; but it is a useless, even harmful, natural gift when it does not lead to self-expression, but simply to virtuosity.  

I do not know whether we can be sure that drawing and painting is one and the same thing; however, at least to me, they seem to be inseparable.

8 Which artists would you most like to blatantly rip off?

Nobody in particular

9 Why is your art made?

Probably as simple as my own necessity

10 What does being an artists mean to you?

Maybe I am not answering this question directly, but I no longer understand what the word "artist" means today. It seems to have become an over-used and highly-inflated term.

11 Are you happy with your reasons for making art? i.e Are there any trade offs that make life hard?

In this work there are moments when you feel like in the middle of a risky adventure almost lost in a labyrinth, where you cannot find the way out.

12 When does your art become successful?

As a painter, you are not only the author of your pictures, you are also often the first person to regard them with indulgence, or, at times, with severity. When you decide that a picture is finished (always a difficult decision to take), your judgement is generally based on the structure of the composition, the energy of its lines, the intensity of its colour, and so on. The issue of the message behind the work is, strangely, a matter that hardly enters into it. I am interested in measuring my painting through certain characters, environments, or atmospheres. I try to do my job as a painter well. When I paint, I don't send messages and I don't pass judgements. My painting demonstrates: it does not deduce. I speak as a painter, and can only speak in those terms. When I am in my studio I paint, I think, I torment myself. I do not imagine that I am creating a masterpiece. I paint a picture; I revise it, move it, destroy it, and refer to it as something that does not seem to have any practical use. It is, in fact, the absolute lack of any practical aspect that allows me to create a good painting, which can serve to make the person looking at it reflect. I am convinced that the job of the painter does not end with the finished picture. Instead, it ends in the eyes of the person viewing it. If there is no possibility of re-inventing it, to put the painter’s experience in his studio to our own use, then painting really dies.

13 What is art?

Art is a word that now seems to refer to just about anything, and it is gradually losing its traditional significance. The significance that we have traditionally assigned to art can no longer be the same, ever since, over a period of time, it lost its original function. Modern Man has now turned to science, religion, politics, perhaps even to philosophy, to find answers and comfort for our expectations and anxieties

14 How do you start the process of making work?

By standing in front a new white canvas the same way I would stand in front of the open Ocean.

15 Who prices your work? And how is the price decided upon?

My dealers. Accordingly to the request, I suppose.

16 What is your next; move,project,show etc?

A new major retrospective of my work has just been announced. It will be held in Cesena, Italy, in the Renassaince Malatestiana Library, Vittorio Sgarbi will be the curator and the Catalogue will be published by SKIRA.

17 What are the pros and cons of the art market?

I have had exclusive contracts with various art dealers; some satisfactory, others less so.
Art dealers are not all the same: some are capable and good at their work, some are like shop-keepers plying their trade, and some are adventurers.
Except that I must say that the similarities between them always outweigh the differences.
The painter needs them in order to be able to devote himself to his work. But you have to try to keep them under control ……
It is never an easy relationship

18 Which pieces would you like to be remembered for?

The painting I have just finished: il Bar del Crocevia (the painting I am attaching here)

19 Any routine in making your artwork? If so what?

Not really. Just to enter the studio and then put the canvas on the easel.

Though sometimes I must start from many preparatory sketches.

20 What has been the biggest break in your career?

21 Who has been the biggest influence on you?

All one's various influences are transformed so greatly over time, and become absorbed and interlinked, so it becomes really difficult to say which artists have had the greatest influence on my work. You also have to remember that often an artist manipulates the work of great artists who have inspired him. In order to produce an entirely original work, an artist cannot avoid betraying the works he most admires.
In case, by saying this, I seem to be avoiding the issue, I can mention a few names, in no particular order of preference: Caravaggio, Velasquez, Goya, Daumier, Degas, De Kooning, Bacon, and many others.

22 How many artworks have you given away and to whom?

Many many…to galleries friends collectors museums myself

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