I spent my childhood surrounded by beauty: ancient objects, books, works of art. My greatest artistic influence has been my family. Being artists, my parents were my tutors and my guides, taking me to museums, galleries, and to endless artists’ workshops – where I could soak up the atmosphere and learn my craft without even realising it.

My grandmother…Perhaps she is the reason I love drawing the faces of old people. I see ‘old-age’ as a supreme goddess; a synonym for power and transcendental wisdom, and an ever-present inspiration for creativity.

How I work?

When I close my eyes, I don’t see anything. Emptiness. But as soon as I pick up a pencil the world is transformed.

Fantastic landscapes, cities, cathedrals, magical creatures are all found on the surface of the blank page, and it all happens at the moment of design, because the imagination is the creativity of perception.

Perceiving the world, I am adding to it, painting it, bringing it to my unique perfection, sharing this honourable work with God.

Where does my inspiration come from?

I read constantly: fairy tales, poetry, fantasy, erotic stories… I draw illustrations for non-existent books. The faces of my characters often take on the features of my friends or acquaintances.

I like turning people I know into archetypes or into the great heroes of mythology. By doing this I am giving them a pass into the life of immortality.

A favourite scene of mine to draw is a great crowd of people. As in Bosch’s famous triptychs, not a single pose, not a single face is repeated, and the crowd is depicted as a collection of personalities caught in a state of apotheosis, total truth and disclosure.

My philosophy

I denote my philosophy with the term “transcendental solipsism”.

I think of my work as a dialogue with the Creator, and so the figure of an Old man is present in almost all of my compositions.