Points and Counterpoints

By Aurelio Sartorio

The first creative act of painting is the choice of format. This is an extremely important decision because the organisation of the picture’s internal space is closely related to the form and dimension of the support (the same rectangular canvas can be placed either horizontally or upright, so giving life to two entirely different paintings…). The lines create the structure, the “norm” of the painting, and this is confirmed or contradicted by the colours. The actual painting then proceeds dialectically in a continuum of theses and antitheses which lead to the synthesis of the final picture. I prefer visually ambiguous colours that activate the perceptive intelligence of the viewer (light blue/grey, light blue/lilac, lilac/pink, yellow/green etc.), colours that are unconventional, colours that are either very dark (greens, blues, violets or maroons that at first sight seem black), or very clear (tending to white). I alter pure colour by lowering or dirtying their tonality with other hues, or by diluting them with white. I spend a great deal of time involving myself with colour, and often the completion of a painting comes about by very slightly varying the tone of a colour. Daring and dissonant colour combinations underline the indeterminate and prismatic character of the hues making them vibrant, and sparking off a perceptive stimulus in the mind contradicting what the eye actually sees. I use white or, rather, whites as a colour and not as absence or emptiness (…). My paintings are not planned, I do not make sketches or models; what I decide on before starting a work is the dimension or form of the support. I begin to paint with a very free approach, without yet knowing in what direction I will go. The first phase of the work is anarchic, liberating; I use the colours that lie to hand or I prepare new ones, experimenting with mixtures and tones, and without bothering myself with the “quality” of the painting. I do not care about the outcome of what I am painting. This is an experimental and frenetic moment, and I try to interrupt the flow of thought and of work almost casually. I recognise and follow: quotations, associations, memories, ghosts, ideas, and hints that then disappear. It is in these circumstances that I “discover” colours, juxtapositions, and the organisation of a space/colour that otherwise I would never have taken into consideration. Slowly I recuperate my control over thoughts and painting and I begin a dialogue between myself and the painting. Usually I search for a colour-structure that gives the “keynote” to the work, then I begin on the construction: I add, superimpose, repeat, change, shift, include, take away, and eliminate structures and colours, at first freely and then, once the painting takes on a precise direction, my intervention becomes more meditated (…).

The interventions slowly become more precise and meditated, the structure is stabilised, the parts which no longer have meaning are sacrificed, even if they have cost me days of work. In fact they are not lost, they are still perceptible “under the skin” and they help to form the body and the memory by way of a tactile quality that the painting would not otherwise have. Structure and colour are definitively wedded together. Then there begins the “search for agreement”, the fine tuning of tones, of the saturation and intensity of the various hues: a hard task of weights and counterweights where even minimal variations can change completely the perception and value of such uncertain colours. Apparently contrasting aspects can harmonise because of the right tone, the point of dynamic balance, and so resolve the painting.

Aurelio Sartorio