On Art, Shades of Green and Nature, on the Island of Elba

The island of Elba on which I live is surrounded by blue, but its heart is green… A thousand shades of green, if not more. I’ve always been fascinated by this: by the fact that human beings, at an ancestral level, have the ability to recognise in nature the subtlest variations in green, more so than of any other colour.

This is because our species evolved amidst greenery, in forests where the capacity to recognise plants and other animals made the difference between life and death.

The idea from which I started out for the creation of the “Nature” series of artworks was just this suggestion of the endless range of greens that we perceive.

But I wanted to produce a more abstract and conceptual kind of work. I wanted green to become a paradigm, the primary element of a language which is that of Nature.

SEE THE WHOLE SERIES

The other ingredient I needed was a forest, a natural sacred place where the trees connect the earth to the sky in a majestic way.

So I went to a place I am fond of, a path on Mount Capanne, the highest point on the island of Elba. It is the path leading to the hermitage of San Cerbone, and is very varied because it passes from pines and firs to wooded glades with gushing streams of water in the rainy season.

So I embarked on my project between Mount Capanne and Mount Perone. I immersed myself in nature, studying the colours of the leaves, the front and the back, recto/verso, with the curiosity and patience of a researcher. What I found was gold, or rather green, a universe of greens.

Then in the studio, slowly and with precision, I traced those colours on handmade paper in Sennellier inks. Each colour, a piece in a mosaic of vegetation.

SEE THE CREATIVE PROCESS ON PINTEREST

An interesting artistic reference for this work for me is Agnes Martin, an artist whose paintings I fell in love with and studied years ago when doing my thesis at the Accademia di Brera.

She was an unusual artist, who moved from the pulsating city of New York to the Colorado countryside to commence a work of pure research, leading an almost monastic life.

She described herself as an Abstract Expressionist, an artist who creates abstract works that express feelings and sensations. Nature was a continual source of personal inspiration for her, in her quest for an absolute synthesis of form.

DISCOVER AGNES MARTIN

My ‘Nature’ series is inspired by this great artist, in the sense that it shares the same need for an abstract language in order to communicate subtle personal perceptions when faced with the green of trees and other plants.

What these works aim to convey is a power – a superpower my son would call it – that of green as a complex and natural colour which vibrates with well-being and peace, as happens in a glade or forest.

The green colour of harmony and the heart. The green of which we have so much need, which helps us to be more aware not just of the value of nature but also of humanity as an element within it and dependent on it.

The series is a work in progress and should be viewed as an organic whole, a visual discourse made by a nature that in the end is, we hope, boundless.

I’ve tried to tell this story out loud, taking you to the island of Elba, along the path of San Cerbone… If you want to listen to it you can do so here: