Scissione 2019

In this painting by Roberto Ferri, there are no dominant gestural marks as such, but I can feel the artist's hand carefully modelling this figure in oil paint. The artist is really pushing paint around to describe a certain kind of light falling on the body. I imagine it could be both laborious and exhilarating to build up all those thin layers of paint, like a dance between observation and invention. Maybe Ferri was thinking about Caravaggio as he made this, and his interest in the contrast of light and shadow? The figure’s face, especially those tired eyes, hints at something deeper, some kind of existential questioning. I guess artists have been grappling with similar themes for centuries, each finding their own language to express universal experiences, inspiring one another across time. It's like a great, ongoing conversation where we’re all throwing our ideas into the mix.