Interview with: Adriano Scarano
September 2025
Adriano Scarano was born in 1998 in Mottola, in the south of Italy, in a family of five living in a little house just outside the village, living in contact with nature with his two brothers. From elementary school, he began to feel a connection with art: during these years, he approaches the acting world. However, it was only during middle school that Adriano came into contact with drawing thanks to his art teacher. Thanks to some evening lessons organized by the latter, Adriano has the opportunity to understand the anatomy of people and objects but also to study in a deeper way the several art currents. Later, during high school, he began to follow lessons by the artist Roberta Pepe who continued to mentor him until his university years, when Adriano pursued studies outside the artistic field. This event did not discourage him. In fact, after completing two degrees, he returned to Mottola resuming lessons with Roberta Pepe. From this moment, his style changes becoming more mature and self-confident. After a deep study of the anatomy and acrylic colors, Adriano decided, with the support of his teacher, to switch to oil colors that which opened up a new universe, developing a more personal and sentimental style. His last works are focused on loneliness seen from different perspectives.
Welcome Adriano, first tell us about your background and why you chose to pursue this career.
Do you remember the first artwork that stirred something inside you?
Thank you for this question. It’s a funny story because I always had this strong passion for painting, but something always stopped me from doing a bigger step. I always lived in constant fear of failing. In fact, I studied engineering in Turin for 5 years. Anyway, after all these years and fatigue, I understood that this was not my road: I was not happy to do what I studied for, I was not happy to start the day knowing what was expecting me. So, I acknowledged the fact that I could change my life and now I’m putting all myself in this career that is the only thing that gives me the energy to open my eyes in the morning and get up. It all started with a painting of De Chirico, “Oreste e Pilade” specifically (which I also tattooed on my arm): I don’t know how to explain exactly why but when I saw it for the first time during an art lesson in the middle school, I lost myself in that empty face; I felt absorbed by it. In that moment, I understood how art can be strong and how it can transmit a lot of emotions with a single color or trait.
Who are your favourite artists, and who are the ones that built your creative imaginary?
For sure, I can talk about three artists who influence my artistic journey: Lucian Freud, Egon Schiele and Denis Sarazhin. These three have a great influence on me and on my art. I find it really interesting how they depict human bodies with “cruelty”, how they use colors and their brushstroke style.
How would you describe your artistic practice? What are the recurring elements, themes, and concepts you refer to?
In all my artworks, the human body is the main part; it dominates the canvas and becomes the protagonist of the artwork. In my last series “Solitudine”, I focused more on how a person positions itself toward the observer; the common feature of this series is the absence of the face of the characters replaced by a “cold flame”. This is due to two aspects: the first one is that I don’t remember the faces of people I meet, except for my family whom I see every day; the second one is that a facial expression can be a cover for what we have inside ourselves. I believe that while a face can lie, a body cannot: how a person stands in the middle of a room or how that person approaches a talk with someone can describe what that person thinks in a better way. I think, to sum up, that the bodies can show to the world what burdens our minds.
What inspires you? Where do the ideas come from? How do you develop your projects?
The need to be heard inspires me—to be heard by others and to listen to ourselves. Only after years, I understood that I felt like a ghost to myself and to the world and I know that this is not only for me. I want to let people know that it is normal to feel misunderstood, sad, nervous, lonely, whatever; it is ok and it is necessary to accept it in a way to understand it and elaborate it. It is very to important to stop everything and to start to listen to ourselves: what we want, how we feel, etc. My projects are based and will be based on this concept: how you feel is normal, and you are not alone—that’s okay.
What projects do you plan to work on this year?
At the moment, I am working on a new series of paintings called “Solitudine”, loneliness in Italian. It originated from the belief that I think that loneliness is not a condition but a simple feeling; that we should not escape from it because it is part of ourselves, in some cases from the birth. We are not inherently lonely; we simply feel lonely. We feel lonely at home, on our sofa. We feel lonely among a lot of people, in a wonderful city. We feel lonely when we suffer and when we are happy. We feel lonely and we fear it. We feel lonely without any reason. It is important to understand that it is okay. That’s ok.
What do you want your art to convey to the people who see it?
I want people who observe my paintings to feel understood. I want them to release their strongest emotions; only in this way can they feel lighter.
We are at the end of this short interview, would you like to add something about your artistic research? How did you find the collaboration with our gallery?
I’d like to say that art is not marketing but emotions; my research will be always focused on this. If a piece of art doesn’t provoke something in the observer, it is a simple object to decorate your house. To conclude, I would like to thank you for this big opportunity and I hope that people observing my paintings could feel at least a litle part of what I felt during the process.