Here's how it went

I was born in Palermo on June 16, 1971 and since I was a child I have loved the world of art. Obviously, like all children, I started with drawing, and just like all children, I also loved to describe my emotions and experiences through the language of signs and colors. My first approach to the study of an artistic discipline, however, was with music. I will always have to thank my uncle Pino, younger brother of my father Antonino, for giving in to my suffocating insistence that in fact forced him to give me his old electric guitar from the sixties. It was with that guitar in my hand that I understood that art would have a certain weight in my life. Throughout my adolescence I studied not only guitar, but also piano at a jazz school in Palermo. I believed that music would be my life and like many teenagers I began to play in bands and I must say, with something more than a fair amount of passion. It was just when I was completely absorbed in the thought of writing songs, studying improvisation and playing with commitment, that all this changed suddenly and badly. My mother passed away after a long illness and this put an end, at least in part, to my musical path and above all to a carefree adolescence. During those years little or nothing happened and what happened during the day, I was less passionate about than it should be. It was only a bit of social life, some sporadic concerts and some long and damned love stories that gave meaning to things. Everything had to change immediately. And that's how art returned to my life, I didn't understand it right away, but as time went by I concluded that in some way, it would never go away. In 1993 I decided to take advantage of an opportunity for professional collaboration from an art gallery. Contrary to what I imagined, the work turned out to be anything but static. In fact, and for this purpose they immediately sent me to Sardinia with the task of contacting their clients to propose them works of Italian art of the mostly figurative, at most informal, market. So I went to Calabria, then to Puglia and then again to Lazio. And that's how I found myself without really understanding, at least at the beginning, touring Italy for years in the company of my colleagues and a photographic catalogue to show to our collectors with the aim of proposing: now a Salvatore Fiume or a Renato Guttuso or a work by Giuseppe Migneco etc. The commitment of those years was maximum, I had to study in depth: biographies, pictorial movements and techniques, both artistic and sales. What was immediately clear to me was that the greatest teaching would be offered to me by the road: the discovery, the journey, the countless quantity and variety of people I would meet, the places I would visit, the dialects I would be able to hear and recognize, often different from province to province... As time went by, I developed the need to grow professionally, so I moved to a larger company and then to another, even larger one. A series of events, both planned and fortuitous, consequently led me shortly after to collaborate with a large international art and culture company. This new condition allowed me to reach my goal and therefore to study in a structured way, the different facets of the world and the art market. Talking little by little with various Italian authors and delving into the subject, finally from various points of view: artistic, communicative and conceptual, I acquired a more mature vision of the object I was going to propose and above all of what could be behind it. Understanding that I was interested in delving deeper into the creative aspect, but that I could not afford to neglect the commercial aspect, I tried to fulfill my commercial duties in order to achieve the goal I had set myself. Fortunately, my sales were many and of increasing quality. What I discovered with experience, in those years, is that the best communicative logic must be completely based on the emotional presentation of the work, the artist and the pictorial movement of reference and its economic value. While all this was happening, little by little my interest was moving more and more, as already mentioned, towards the artistic and creative side. I began to paint, believing that this new activity would satisfy that need. But it was not so. For a while I continued to sell art, while my experience as a Sunday artist took more and more shape. Perhaps, thanks to this new pastime, I would finally satisfy my hunger for artistic research, or at least so it seemed to me at the beginning. In 2013 I decided to start my own business as a dealer, offering works by Italian artists to my clientele that I had acquired over many years. That precarious balance between artistic creation and the art market didn't last long, though. More and more involved in the creative process, I ended up losing my "focus", that is, that I was a dealer and that I would have to be one for who knows how long to continue to make ends meet. I certainly wasn't and could never be an artist, at least not in this life. So I put a lid on it and continued with my work. One spring afternoon of that same year, I met with a well-known and esteemed artist of our Sicilian realism. I was in his studio for work and as I usually did with interesting artists, I didn't miss the opportunity to talk to him and ask him about his experiences. The question that I really wanted to ask him, and at a certain point I actually asked him, was precise: "How did you come to the conclusion that you were an artist?" Already an artist, I did not know how, in all conscience, a man could decide to call himself an artist, but I was certain of the fact that this was still a wicked choice, unthinkable, in short a real ruin! While the Master spoke to me about his experiences as a gallery owner and his late decision to become a painter himself, which occurred at the age of 45, I continued to brood. I had not understood it at the time, but suddenly a spring inside me went off and while the elderly painter continued to speak, my ego was elsewhere, blocked in another dimension, the unconscious and dangerous one that decides for you. Finally my unconscious, just as I was getting into the car immediately after leaving the painter's studio, deigned to communicate to me its irrevocable decision. And in fact it turned out to be irrevocable, at least for me. This new and wicked stance of my subconscious would in fact then influence, not only my life from then on, but also that of my family. Yes, that was a sudden and violent illumination, I could, indeed I had to, finally become an artist, even at a late age. I just had to understand how. After all, I had been a brilliant and successful merchant for over 2 decades and I would certainly have found a way to sell my works, somehow. It was the internet that offered me this opportunity, in fact I understood that the web would have been the ideal means of diffusion, suitable for my new condition as an artist and considering the fact that my language was innovative and from a Central European background, it would certainly have revealed itself to be the ideal tool. The natural vocation of the web is to attract and direct millions of young people and curious people of all ages to the most varied themes of human knowledge. The world of social media today constitutes the best means to make yourself known and appreciated by those like me, who love the avant-garde and are fascinated by novelties and the search for alternative artistic languages. In light of this reasoning, I created my own online presence and sold my work right away, understanding that this would be my profession from then on, and my life. Irrational, insecure, crazy and absolutely precarious, but finally my life.