I am a British-Italian painter whose work is often concerned with memory, symbolism  and atmosphere. My childhood was spent around  my father’s Italian restaurant and it's interior and artwork has stayed with me all my life. The enormous figures in these paintings  stared at me as I ate my pasta and I in turn would stare up at them, wondering who they were and who had painted them. These were the first paintings to  inspire me and emulating this sense of wonderment  became integral to my own work. I had many influences during this time from Chagall, Ensor and Doig, to my father’s friend Enzo Apicella, an Italian political cartoonist whose book ‘Mouthfool’ I’d often rifle through at the bar. 

         My process has always been relatively unconscious although guided by a deliberate attention to the emotional undertone of my memories which informs the 'emotional atmosphere' of the painting. My composition and  palette are both part of this intuitive dimension. These works are frequently the site of symbiosis for contradictory themes; comfort amidst discomfort, playfulness and comedy amidst pain. I am curious about the complex internal conflicts that influence our private worlds and  it is important for my figures to wear these conflicts on their faces. As a student I became engrossed with the many characters of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte and to this day my work is scattered with the tragic, mocking, Fiorillian expressions and  lyrical bodies. These figures experience forgiveness, relive humiliations and perform in the great spectacle of my life painted. Today my work with memory has not only become  a process of observation and emulation but also of creation and discovery; the real figures of my world are spatially and temporally configured, reconfigured, distorted and exaggerated with enormous symbolism. At the end of it all, each painting asks me, “what did you learn from this experience? Did you learn anything at all?”