Delfina Piretti
In Italian they have a saying: “Devo farlo per le mie ossa“. The translation is: “I need to make it for my bones,” or “I need to do it for my strength.” The little notebooks I carry around, found objects, photographs, dreams, metaphors, disturbing injustices, are all part of the energy to make art. I work from the feminine principle: a place of receptivity, allowing, surrendering,. I work with a variety of materials: oil paint, canvas, paper mache, natural materials: wood, plants and flower essences. The art making moves between paintings, installations, and public art works. My work references my Italian Catholic cultural roots, Zen meditation practice, and years of working with my own and others’ suffering- doing body/mind psychotherapy. Finishing a painting is like waking from a compelling dream, a stream of coherent fragments that is affirming and confronting. Dreams and paintings speak the same language: image, sensation and nonlinearity. In the same way as a kid I use to make forts in the woods I make parachute tent installations, womb-like spaces that ask something of the viewer: a confession, expression, a place of origination and development. It’s the questions that interest me.
