Art restoration involves different fields and aspects which encompass a good portion of my heart..art history, art and painting, inter-cultural experiences, travel... and imagination and creativity. For me, it is a world of mystery and beauty... there's something so intriguing, something that captivates me. Works of art faded and darkened by time...aged beauty, beauty and stories often hidden under a veil of dust and grime, just waiting. The cracked paint, the tell tale lines of time, covering the surface of a painting like an old woman's aged skin, who is full of stories and secrets from a life gone by, all sealed behind a quiet, thoughtful smile..just waiting, for someone to ask. A restorer's job is not to cover up these marks left by time which would lie about the age and undermine the history - what the painting has to say about the times past or, for that matter, change anything about the painting. The artistic language of the artist, the artistic style of the artist must remain the same. the job of the restorer is to and preserve and to celebrate the spirit of the painting.
Most of all, this is a skill I can contribute to the world, it's something I can do to help preserve the heritage and history of various people and places....and perhaps even learn and about and celebrate different cultures.
I could go on and on when I start thinking about it, but these are a few reasons why I find art restoration so interesting, and why I want to pursue it as a career. I just love Florence and Italy..Europe in general, it's almost overwhelming, the history, the art, the people, the culture...In fact, just walking from the school to my apartment, in that small stretch of road that I traveled everyday, which is a 5 minute walk, it contained so so much history, so much to see, it often took me a lot longer than five minutes to get to school because it always seemed like there was something new to see, something new to take in..something new to experience, to sense...it was a stimulus overload at times...which I loved.. the language, the movement, the colors and people, the smells, the sounds..the grit and grime, the chaos, the beauty, the tastes, the intrigue, wonderment....inspiration.
On returing home, I come back with so many new experiences, and feelings and memories of....taste..of the sea...smells...colors..people...mountains...of everything...and and and.... when I sit down and try to paint, everything turns in to a blur, its hard to remember things clearly, to make out solid images.. so when I start, and all that comes out in a flood of color. Its more of an emotion than anything, an elusive memory...All I can do I capture the feeling in paint. Most of the time, the subject and composition comes to me as I lay down the colors of the background, which you can see in the paintings of my bird series.....
