The Field and the Sky
TEMPERA ON CANVAS 50 x 70 cm.
The theme of this canvas is obvious, Mele painted the field and the sky of our garden. At the beginning I thought he got the proportions between earth and sky wrong. We are actually used to see paintings with a wider portion of ground then sky, but that's because there are more interesting things to be represented in the first one. Mele, however, has a completely different and original view of reality. I realized he simply painted things as he sees them: if you look at a plain landscape you definitely see much more sky than earth! Adults' attention normally analizes details of the ground, because the sky is often more monotonous.
The aspect that impresses me most anyway, is the completeness of the painting. I have seen kids painting many times: they draw a green line at the bottom for the grass, a blue line at the top for the sky and then they put people, animals etc in the middle. I've never seen young children completing the sky to the ground, nor making what is generally considered a background, a set, the subject of a work itself.
Leggi in ITALIANO