BABY'S ON FIRE Painting

My name is Roberto Russo (latigreassenza) and I was born in 1961 in Cattolica, Italy, but since I was a child I live in Pesaro. Although my paintings are understood in the genre of abstract expressionism for me they are stages of a research that I do about myself by exploring concepts and materials, beyond genres and classifications. Rather than abstractionism, it seems to me to do portraiture. Only that I portray figures, faces, physiognomies of creatures in nuce, in formation. Sometimes I think that my works represent life itself at the moment of conception: they are snapshots of molecules scattered throughout the universe, lumps of essences floating in space and time before being conceived ontologically. I realize how all this can be called abstract expressionism, conceptual painting, etc., because such is what emerges, the final evidence, but I like to simply portray glows of existences that arise from shadows, subliminal landscapes formed by figures that exploded or in aggregation. Something nascent, a presence that is not yet there but that could be there, that is going to be or, why not, that there has been. Technically I work on canvases that I prepare with layers of plaster and then apply the color on it. I use acrylic paints and spray paint (rarely oil, pencils and wax) and sometimes I mix them with plaster, sometimes I use them pure. I paint on medium and fine grain canvases, preferably medium to large in size; for the cycle of works at the end of 2022, including a quadritic, I used for example canvases of dimensions 60 x 120 and 50 x 100. I also like to work on paper, but with heavy weight and on wood, but I prefer these in smaller sizes. I first prepare the canvases with plaster and stucco to obtain a thickness on which the color can lie so as to create material effects, reflections, play of light and shadow. The color itself is matter and I like to highlight its three-dimensional effect. Even when I use spray paint, which by its nature does not entail thick material effects, I look for three-dimensionality through the contrast between fluorescent and non-fluorescent colors, between metallic reflections (silver gold bronze) and opaque color. I also use spray paint directly on black and white plasters that are still fresh. I also look for reflections and shadow games in two-dimensional works, in those not ‘prepared’ with the material thickness. But even in these I look for the breakthrough of space, depth.