Interview with: Francesca Brivio
February 2021
Francesca Brivio, from Italy, learned how to paint at 8 years old, focusing in oil painting on canvas. She graduated at artistic high school and then studied fashion design specializing in menswear. After a period in London, as well as a few other experiences in the fashion industry, She began working in a new field that allowed her to travel.
Currently, She paints almost every evening. She is drawn to subjects such as portraits, the human bodies, animals, magical creatures, water and untouched landscapes.
Welcome Francesca, I would like to start this interview from the beginning, do you remember which artist or which artwork moved something inside you when you were a child?
I still remember when I saw a book’s cover with the famous painting “Girl with a pearl earring” by J.Vermeer; it caught my attention and I remember It as one of the moments that moved me.
Faces, characters, bodies and animals have always been attractive to me.
I’ve always felt art as my own space since I was a child, the best way to express myself. The first person I had artistically looked up was my mom, with her simple magic touch and natural predisposition to creation manifested through many forms. The second one is Master Massimo Bollani, the great artist who taught me how to paint.
And then? how have your approach and references changed growing up?
I admired Masters like Rembrandt, Diego Velazquez and Giovanni Boldini.
I love the intensity of Edvard Munch, Otto Von Dix, James Ensor, Egon Schiele, and the gestures of Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville.
The choice of the expressive medium by an artist has multiple meanings, what prompted you to propose your works through painting?
The oil color, dense and bright, satisfies the senses. It slips under gestures, it follows the changes, it doesn’t dry immediately. It’s important to me to paint on fresh and wet colors. My approach is instinctive, I’m used to finish a piece in full immersion, letting the knives and brushes sliding along with the flowing of emotions.
Usually each artist has a different modus operandi, what is yours? how did your projects start and how do they develop?
Everything starts from kind of a dream: images are blurry, they are more or less consciously stolen from life, interiorized, mixed, filtered and then, translated on canvas. Sometimes I have references or I need to study a composition on a piece of paper, otherwise I directly sketch on the white canvas. The developing process is driven by an irresistible energy, a kind of trance. Even when the project is well planned, the result is always a surprise.
What function do you attribute to your works and why?
Painting has a great therapeutical function for me, it is an intimate investigation and dialogue which brings questions and peace to myself. The goal is when my works, like any others, are able to create a bridge with strangers, transcending any different backgrounds and languages. This is a connection through people, made by the resounding of emotions. The same image is reflected and transformed every time in a different story, becoming a charming deformation, a continuous collective creation.