Interview: Giuseppe Barilaro

In conversation with artist Giuseppe Barilaro who graduated from the Religious art-decorating and painting degree course at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Catanzaro, Italy.


@giuseppebarilaro_artist

Can you talk about your journey into or interest the arts?

I was born as a figurative painter, my works are mainly related to politics, ecclesiastical, philosophical and psychiatric interest and research.

My artistic goal includes, among others, the discovery of what is hidden beyond the materials we commonly use to create works of art.

I decided to become a painter to be the voice of representation of our reality while playing with the people, the places and the situations that we live nowadays, like I was playing with toys, using them as main elements in my paintings.

Do you use a sketchbook? I’m interested in what a sketchbook means to you and your work?, or how people develop their ideas.

My personal technique consists of choosing a certain topic, developing ideas while doing some further research on the topic itself. All of this while taking notes on my sketchbook. After my studying phase, I start using my sketchbook to elaborate the potential final art product. I usually draw about 4,000 sketches. If, at the end, one of those looks good enough, I start working on the actual painting to create the final art work.

Your work is abstract in nature. What are the main things you are exploring through your practice?

My aim is to find a way to discover and tell the truth through my personal relation with colour.

Can you talk about your process of working. How do you work, how often, is there a particular pattern?

I work 12 hours a day, while listening to classical music and to Rocco Hunt. The technique is the classical oil painting on wood, after this, the entire painting is burned up and also destroyed by the fire. What is left after this process, is re-shaped with a painting brush and a spatula.

During the third step all the character’s faces in the painting, are literally destroyed with a knife, in order to express through this image the meaning of a medical-psychiatric pathology, which is called prosopagnosia.

Do you find the process of creating work relaxing or therapeutic? I’ve become increasingly interested in the relationship of the sketchbook and the work to the artist.

I create art for a reason: I am able to exist and win against death a thousand times in a day.

“In my opinion, what art has to do is harming, hurting. It can’t be made only to be hung up on a wall.”