Stella Dina (above, with an amused look amid her installation of retouché titled "Performing 3") is a very interesting italian contemporary artist based in the Rimini area. From 1994 to 2007 she widely exhibited paintings and works on paper in Italy and all over the world by public and private galleries as well as no-profit cultural organizations, underground artists communities and alternative show-rooms. Unfortunately, several health problems forced her to interrupt suddenly all the exhibition activities for almost six years until mid-2013. At present she is gradually returning to show her work on regular basis.
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Stella could you please tell us when and why you began your career as an artist ?
My decision to devote myself to visual art in the early 90's was neither a planned project nor an irrational impulse, rather I would describe it now as the gradual and logical conclusion of a long journey into the world of creativity I started at least a decade before.
Therefore you didn't start directly in visual arts.
Not really, as a matter of fact after I completed my studies I was eager to implement what I learned about architecture and interior design, so I started my apprenticeship right away and this enabled me to establish close and interesting relationships with outstanding professionals operating also in related sectors such as advertising, fashion and of course visual arts.
Obvious contaminations immediately loomed and gradually I let them flow freely into my mainstream activity with no restrictions as soon as I realized the amazing way they were nourishing and enriching my creativity.
It was really very exciting to be engaged simultaneously in such different but interrelated areas of interest and a little later I began to feel that this blend of experiences was turning unexpectedly into something that resembled much to the basis of a budding expressive language.
Adding this to the fact that I always loved drawing, painting and art history, they actually absorbed a large amount of my studies and that is absolutely part of myself experimenting not only in subject matter but also technically, I started being fascinated by the idea of committing myself completely to visual art.
A brand new career ?
Well I wouldn't call it exactly a career, I do not feel it as a job at all but simply as an overwhelming desire to create and surround myself with artworks capable of make more enjoyable my everyday life. However, answering your question, it did not happen all of a sudden, I was happy the way my apprenticeship was going on and honestly there were various delays and hamletic doubts perhaps due also to the fact that I am italian and as is widely known, here we have a so splendid but also cumbersome legacy of great masters, I couldn't help but wondering if there was seriously any need of another would-be-artist out there in an already crowded arena, furthermore a woman artist but evidently I toke it up as a sort of challenge and with a great deal of humility and without the slightest "pretention of drawing men closer to God" borrowing the words of a great poet, finally I found myself thoroughly involved in the realm of visual art in just a couple of years.
Was it simply a challenge or there was something more?
Thinking over what happened, I realize distinctly now that the most intimate reason that led me to try such an entirely new and risky artistic path, essentially was an ever growing awareness that to some extent visual art was the critical sphere of activity to prove both to myself and to the others if I had really something worthy to say at creative level.
How would you describe your conceptual approach to painting ?
As an interior designer apprentice, I had the pleasure of sharing experiences with a lot of interesting people, both customers and collegues coming from many different cultural environments, talking with them about my aesthetic ideas, avoiding big words, unnecessary complexities and calling things by their proper name always trying to make everything simpler according to my ethical and conceptual guidelines based on synthesis, cleanness and order.
Likewise I am intentionally investigating every aspect of painting in its most basic meaning in visual terms, because while I share the view that a work of art is generally considered to be a sort of public statement of what really matters to the artist, about what in his vision of the world is worth attending to, I am also aware that an artwork may be seen by common people as a simple object made of lines, colour and materials that finally someone has to understand, carry home and live with.
Exactly for this reason I firmly believe that bringing even large issues such as social, political, religious, environmental ones into the easiest and most understandable context, creating works with a solid conceptual base but without sacrificing their accessibility, is key in engaging the widest audience possible.
To stress the importance of this basic concept, I oriented myself towards forms of creativity enjoyable even by art newbies in their everyday life, aiming not to shock in a gratuitous sense to exact at all costs from them some sort of contributory emotion, rather to go beyond the dictates of contemporary trend and market, establishing a simple visual connection on an intuitive level trying to elicit curiosity and the desire to know something more even from the most hasty and casual passer-by.
But actually in what way do you translate such a concept into your painting ?
According to this vision, I started working out my visual vocabulary going along the narrow boundary dividing abstract and representational, marking the affinity among painting, illustration and advertising, nurturing an ongoing dialogue between fine finished and ragged surfaces, glossy and matte layers of colours, rhythmic combinations of geometric and non-geometric forms, alternated sequences of bright and dark hues, visible and partially covert details to depict and convey my idea about the never ending narration of the conflict between the positive (but not necessarily the good) and the negative ( not necessarily the evil ).
How do you develop your work and what are your preferred subjects ?
Since the beginning I developed my work mainly through thematic series gathered into a chronologically ordered archive.
I am particularly attracted by emotionally engaging and sometimes controversial issues such as exploring notions of identity and social prejudices, women rights, unconventional religious iconography, relationship between word and image, human rights and freedom of expression and the last one dealing with the theme of physical pain and the denial and the acceptance of suffering.
Nevertheless my work spans a broad range of more descriptive subjects including landscape, still life and figure, because even these apparently simple and traditional themes often give me the pretext to challenge commonplaces, question clichés and resist categorization.
I try to do it through the creation of thought-provoking works made of combinations of images and atmospheres simultaneously informative and enigmatic, formal and passionate, purposely fueling curiosity and uncertainty about their inner meaning, trying this way to convey to the observer wonder and self-reflection, encouraging him to ponder over the possibility of looking at people, facts and things that surround us every day also from a slightly different and unusual perspective, going beyond the first impression, taking nothing for granted, scratching the surface to discover what lies beneath superficial appearences, behind shallow affectations which sometimes conceal the unexpressed and perhaps most interesting side of many human natures.
Do you like to paint with oil, acrylic or other different techniques ?
From a strictly technical viewpoint, I paint mostly with environmentally friendly acrylic colours or water based enamels.
I see my work as an ever evolving process and everytime I keep on trying to add something new such as sand, paper, card-board and many other found objects and materials along with hand engraved or painted text whenever I feel it is necessary.
I love the tactile sensation of ragged edges and heavily textured surfaces or the feeling of incorporated objects overlapped or placed side by side all over them and I like to share it with viewers imagining that even blind persons somehow can enjoy my work, touching and reading it like a sort of Braille code.
Trying to increase the sensation of depth and thickness, sometimes I reach the point of "skeletonizing" the canvas cutting deep into it, dissecting, piercing and sewing, creating a surface with an homogeneous appearance at a distance but which rewards the curious observer with unexpected details as he moves a little closer.
It is a creative and compositional process that takes shape gradually until the finished work appears to be consistent and coherent both with the subject matter and my idea of harmony and overall balance.
Thank you Stella and best wishes for your next exhibition !
artist info: sites.google.com/site/infostelladina
images courtesy of Stella Dina archive
text curated by Enrico Maria Emiliani
Meet an Artist Today by E.M.E. curator 2014 © all rights reserved
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