The poetic art by Roberta Barbieri

"I do not know what comes from all this need to deal with matter, colors and" doing by hand, maybe he was born with me. I still remember that fascinating whirlpool of color, a spiral, which the house painter gave birth like magic, combining white tempera and colored pigments in a bucket. I was five years old. "

Particularly attentive to the themes of ecology, never as now so current, for some time now has found its artistic and eco_compatible dimension precisely in its poetics and the materials it uses. It portrays bodies or details of them that capture the moment, an elusive thought, a perception of reality that wants to capture the mystery, the dark side, its subtle charm, often not only as it appears; where you can meet areas of shadow difficult to cross and the light that comes from meeting with the dark. All this without being too contaminated by the figurative effect, bringing and inviting those who look at them to go further, to venture into the expression of the emotion that is painted. Bodies like volumes, that speak, that are transformed even without details like hands, feet, faces that, if present, are only hinted at; with their descriptive essence they would block the same imaginative representation of the subject. For her paintings she uses a mixed technique: charcoal and land use, marrying them with acrylics in flat colors and lacquers. But the irreplaceable co-protagonists become the supports on which she paints: they are made of recycled wood, recycled, vintage, found here and there. They can be tables of old wardrobes and bedside tables, doors, crate lids, simple boards, or assemblies that are transformed here like icons. It is wood that has lived, even a lot, and that still lives, always keeping inside itself its natural materiality, its essence. And here it is wood grain, the stains of time, its scratches are underlined and not hidden, thus becoming actresses and giving to their presence dignity, purpose, a new life to the whole, in an ideal fusion between man and nature. All that tells us "the body, like wood, are essentially alive, always and in any case, we just have to want to observe and feel". The poetics of her works is therefore a mixture of different lives that come together, intertwine and inspire each other, where the human body comes to life from the body of nature but where exactly the opposite is possible; where "doing art", a civil conscience and a new sensibility towards environmental problems, dance, as in a magic minuet.

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