Stefania Boiano is an Italian landscape and seascape artist living and working in London since 2004. Boiano’s work is inspired by her travels and is about the experience of a landscape or a seascape. Rather than presenting a topographical reality, Boiano abstracts the landscape through her memory and sensory impressions. Her paintings are the synthesis of colours, light and forms seen and experienced in a place in certain weather or season. By deconstructing and isolating key elements of a landscape she challenges our assumptions of what landscape means to us. For more information, visit stefaniaboianoart.com
You deconstruct and isolate key elements of the landscape – can you tell us about your process and your inspiration?
The inspiration for the landscapes starts with my travels away from urbanised areas, where the scenery is not significantly modified by the human hand, where I can experience unknown sights and sounds in deep nature.
I always carry watercolour sketchbooks with me to record my explorations while travelling. By observing and noting what you see, you realise that everything is connected and you allow your memory to sink truly deep in you.
However, once back in my studio, I do not refer to my sketches. At this point, my process takes a meditative dimension. Before adding any mark or colour to the surface, in my mind, I concentrate on the scene to portray and let my selective memory bring back mood, key elements, colours, lights and darks in order to evoke the emotions I’ve experienced in that particular landscape. This is how deconstruction takes place.
Once the vision in my mind feels clear and almost tangible, that is the moment when I start painting almost in a trance, and I do it in a wabi-sabi approach: staying in the moment, in the process, knowing that nothing is finished and nothing is perfect. I don’t do preparatory drawings, I follow my flow and intuition until I feel that the painting is finished.
This process is the culmination of years of exploration, experimentation and deliberate practice. I have drawers overflowing with these experiments and reams of notes. This is what informs my decision making, the clarity I need before I start to paint.
What I want to convey with my paintings is the poetical power of duality in nature. Nature is full of contrasts, but those contrasts balance each other in a wonderful equilibrium. I am in awe of the subtle light on the water under a dark moonlit sky, a bright, sharp horizon line that simultaneously divides and unites the tangible and intangible, the earth and sky. I’m moved by a lonely ancient tree with its commanding roots, exposed and vulnerable on the edge of a cliff, a trembling stone holding its balance under a thundering waterfall, symbols of life and death. A calm turquoise sea under dark stormy clouds. A bright pop of colour in a field against an electric moody sky, harmonious contrasts of light and dark.
How does your relationship with nature impact your work?
My relationship with nature impacts every aspect of my work, from the choice of my materials to the subject matter, to the process. It’s a deep relationship that took shape in my childhood.
I grew up in a small hilly town in Southern Italy in the middle of vineyards and wild fields. This was not just an incredible vista, it was also my playground, my toy shop. Many happy days of exploring the earth and flora with friends. We created our own world and toys from nature around us. I recall using large leaves and branches to build a nest which was our theatre where we could sing and dance away from the gaze of adults before returning home covered in the dust and dirt from the land. What you experience in childhood stays with you forever. I now find myself creating artworks in collaboration with nature. Rainwater, natural pigments, clay, birds’ feathers, leaves, twigs, stones, shells – are just a few of the materials and tools I borrow from mother earth.
When I was ten, we moved into a new house. My parents asked me to choose a room as my bedroom. I raced around the house until I was stopped by a powerful warm light that filled a room with a red hue. It was like a magnet. Bold brushstrokes of vivid Mediterranean colour. This was the precise moment when I discovered the power of landscapes, something that will always be part of my visual DNA.
My relationship with nature was reinforced during my years at University where I chose Oriental Studies at the Istituto Orientale in Naples. Here I discovered my way of thinking was strikingly similar to the Asian philosophical concepts. While the Western attitude sees separate entities not as parts of the whole, for example humans separate from nature and nature as an object to conquer and exploit, I’ve always seen the duality that makes a whole, humans as an integral part of nature, in unity with her. Another aspect that resonates with me is the constant research of the essence. Since I was a child I’ve always searched for the minimalist heart of things, something that is reflected, for example, in my watercolours, which I feel are somewhat close to Oriental ink paintings.
I paint landscapes with no human presence to celebrate the pure beauty and the essence of the spirit of the landscapes I see. The viewer looking at my landscape interpretation is the only human presence in the picture. This “stepping back” in front of nature, impacts the role of the artist as well. While I paint, I’m always researching ways to find myself in a position in which I am a tool of nature and I am not in full control of the whole picture. It’s a dance. I initiate the first steps of my artworks, but then I like seeing what nature comes up with through what I’m doing. Natural chemical reactions start to magically happen. I become the viewer of my own art while an invisible hand plays with it. This explains why I like letting pigments run along traces of water I make, following natural forces such as gravity and capillarity until the time stops the movement and I have to add a new action to trigger the next natural reaction.
Talk us through your inspiration for series South and Wilderness.
South and Wilderness reflect my two main approaches in painting, two ways that correspond to the two types of landscapes I’m enthralled by: bright and sunny or unquiet and dramatic.
South is inspired by places where the light of the sun is warmer. It includes paintings inspired by my travels to Kerala, in India and to some Italian islands during summer. In these places the vivid landscape somehow invites me to use colour more boldly, to add graphic design elements and inspires me to experiment with marks. During my travels, I go hunting in nature for tools I can apply paint with once in my studio. I search for alternative ways to make my own brushes with dried grass, big leaves, feathers and my own pencils with burnt twigs, stones and shells. These are mixed media paintings I make on canvas or wooden panels, mainly with acrylic and oil, in which the compositions unfold over a period of time by adding and removing layers in a gestural, rough and visceral way.
The series Wilderness is inspired by my trips to the Scottish Highlands and North Wales during winter when the light gives the surroundings almost a monochromatic character. My attention in these lands goes also to the textures of the rugged earth and to the strong movement of the wind. Every time I visit a wildland I’m instinctively inclined to use watercolour and ink on paper to convey a message of pure and sacred nature. At the same time, the scientist in me gets incredibly excited about the opportunity to experiment with it. You can achieve endless textures and effects, depending on the paper you use, by adding natural compounds and solutions to the pigments, especially if you also know how to combine them based on their alkalinity or acidity. I have plenty of notes similar to lab journals in which I’ve recorded all my tests in the last ten years. When I paint with watercolours I like to avoid touching the paper with brushes as much as possible since I want to allow the surface to interact naturally and undisturbed with the liquid elements. This is why first of all I guide the flow of water on the surface by simply moving the paper in a specific direction in a certain area, then I repeat the action, very gently and slowly applying the pigments on the previously wetted area so that the colour has the time to spread and sink into the paper. I keep repeating this approach for every area of the composition. The waiting times between one area and another are essential to allow the right drying. The process is physically intense – I have to be very focused, and well balanced and my breath has to accompany the flow of the water or pigments. A little shaky or undecided movement in an inappropriate moment can shatter the whole piece.
As well as painting you have been working on two photography series. Can you tell us about Blind Urban Walk and Plastic Nature?
Photography is my other complementary medium to explore my subject matter. I don’t see it as separate from my painting but rather as indivisible, linked to it organically and fluidly. If a sketchbook lets the natural landscape sink under my skin and allows my concept and painting process to develop slowly once back in my studio, the camera gives me the possibility to create and give a visual voice to the urban human experience in real-time.
Blind Urban Walk encapsulates that. It is an exploration of the human landscape in the urban setting. The idea came up as a reaction to my feelings while experiencing overwhelming crowds in big cities, especially during rush hours.
Walking in a fast-paced, crowded urban environment alters our perception of the people around us. Focused on our own thoughts and plans, we live a busy life of urban indifference and social isolation that is a run against the clock. We feel surrounded by human beings and yet completely alone at the same time. We almost don’t see them as humans or souls anymore, but rather as unwelcome distractions from our thoughts, or something that is responsible for slowing us down as we walk blindly, speedily and absurdly on our way. We don’t even look into their eyes or remember their faces. We don’t see anyone anymore, and that is a chilling consequence of the disconnection from the natural world.
To portray my experience, I’ve captured people walking in the crowded streets of London by deliberately using a bokeh effect to create a utopia-dystopia dichotomy: at a first glance, the resulting photographs are visually pleasing, with vibrant colours and a soft atmosphere yet the message they convey highlights a strong social distortion.
On the same wavelength and again representing a dual concept there is my series Plastic Nature. It started while I was wandering the streets with my camera. As I’m always looking at the world like a scientist with her microscope, a plastic bag in a puddle attracted my attention. By looking closer through my camera’s macro lens I discovered a view very similar to a natural landscape. This uncanny view made me think of our Anthropocene, in which plastic has become an organic element of nature. It is ubiquitous. The symbols par excellence of our plastic world are in fact shopping and garbage bags. They are blown by the wind, carried by the water, bogged down in puddles and by the soil, become intertwined with flowers, plants and branches, and become part of our environment, polluting the whole natural world. And yet plastic is seductive too – in its familiarity, its moulding shape and the way in which nature plays with it.
My photographs convey a sense of the organic and the juxtaposition of artificiality within the natural world, in order to create a feeling of estrangement in the viewer.
Teaching and coaching is a big part of your life, is it important for you to give back to the artistic community?
Yes! I think it is really important to share our knowledge. It’s one of our greatest legacies to inspire and empower others to own their learning, so they can become dreamers and makers.
My passion for sharing comes from the fact I haven’t had a straightforward path in my life – to become an artist I had to find my own way. I know very well how long and how much energy it takes to overcome challenges and find solutions while staying motivated and determined.
I have been lucky in my past to have met a couple of teachers who changed my perspective by not only helping me develop new skills but also, above all, making me see my strengths. I think this is the key factor of being an effective and inspirational teacher: who, besides their knowledge, can be empathetic, can deeply connect and see your potential.
I usually hold group workshops not only in my studio but also for organisations and charities working for the conservation of gardens and nature, like the National Trust for example. With the pandemic I had to move everything online, 1:1 coaching included. On one hand, it has been great to break the geographic boundaries, but on the other I have been missing that special vibrant creative energy that can only exist in real presence, especially when the subject is so tactile.
One situation where the migration online has enhanced the experience is on the course I run for the Master’s Degree at IULM University in Milan. The course is in Visual Digital Communication for the Arts, so there is already an element of virtual and digital that makes the online teaching organically suitable for virtual classes. In fact, the level of the digital content the students have created and their achievements, in general, have been outstanding.
HOW has the current Pandemic impacted your practise?
On one side the Pandemic has seen nearly all of my paintings overcome lockdown and travel restrictions to flee the nest and find new homes around the world, and my teaching and coaching growing exponentially thanks to the rise of online activities. On the other side, the whole experience for me has been like the ground that suddenly caved beneath and swallowed the Greek goddess Persephone while she was going about her normal life.
A disorienting underworld where you don’t see familiar landmarks and you cannot apply existing logic, where your dear ones become shadows on a monitor, a dark and cold cave where you hear the muffled noise of the tragedy unfolding in the whole world. Especially being forced to watch from afar while my home country, Italy, was being hit so hard by the pandemic has been a traumatic experience.
And so like Persephone I’ve found myself in a liminal space, a mysterious place between where I once was and where I have yet to go. I wanted to paint but I couldn’t anymore and certainly not with the same flow and tranquillity as before, so I had to pause and pay attention to my inner questing. This sudden jump into an unknown dimension has been an important turning point. It’s given me the vital opportunity to stop, reflect, observe myself and the world, reorient, learn and then start to move forward with a recharged creativity towards a higher purpose.
What are you working on currently?
I’m working on semi-abstract landscapes using a natural element I’ve never used until now: fire. It will be a new exciting art journey to trigger an initial symbolic act of destruction in order to let nature continue what I’m doing.
Fire is a powerful symbol for this moment, both on a global and personal way. On a global level, we see Nature formidably rebelling against human exploitation with the enormous wildfires we are witnessing, reminding us of the ekpyrosis, the great fire by which the ancient Greeks believed the world would be destroyed and reborn. On a personal level, fire has always been a rite of destruction and rebirth, and so happens with my practise after the great hiatus of the pandemic.
Drawing inspiration from my previous travels in the wilderness, I’m also working on a project of eco-friendly and sustainable wearable art. I cannot wait to see it taking shape as it merges my design and artistic side all linked by my desire to share with others respect and love for this planet.
Keep an eye on my website for more.
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