My current work is deeply connected to the part of the year I spend living and working in an olive grove, close to the hillside town of Palombara Sabina that is north east of Rome, Italy. The inspiration for my drawings, sculptures and prints is derived largely from the Sabina landscape: ancient olive trees, Etruscan, Roman and medieval remains, tombs, and artefacts that can be found throughout the hill towns and surrounding villages.
Olive leaves are stripped from the tree prunings, chopped up and simmered in water to add to the paper making pulp. Similarly, having extracted the juice for making wine, the crushed Sangiovese grapes, are prepared and mixed with cotton rag to form pulp. The wet pulp is cast onto rusted metal sheets that have been prepared so that the resulting marks echo elements of the ancient walls and mosaics that have been my starting point. The cast sheets are left outside to dry in the sun and are then carefully removed from the metal sheet to reveal the artwork. An exciting moment as one is never quite sure how the rust will have reacted with the wet pulp. Each piece is completely unique as it is not possible to fully control how the wet rusty surface will react with the material.
Both the olive leaf and grape skin works reflect my recurring obsession with repetition and exploration of the tension between the organic and geometric. Other underlying themes include the fragility of our eco system with the increasing urbanisation of the landscape in this part of Lazio, as well as exploring, through abstraction, the rich layers of history that can be found at archeological sites such as Villa Adriana and Ostia Antica.
