About Stefano Pallara

Originally from southern Italy, Stefano has lived in London for over two decades. Identity, introspection, mindfulness and freedom are recurrent themes in his work as well as a sense of nostalgia for the Mediterranean Sea and its dazzling light.

Stefano has so far produced three collections of paintings: ‘Colordive’, ‘Inner Horizon’ and ‘Wandering Heights’.

COLORDIVE - A collection of paintings evoking a solitary jump into the unknown for self-discovery. A spiritual communion with the ocean can both frighten and blind with its beauty. An ancestral instinct of surrendering to the primordial rhythms of the tide that overwhelms and releases giving us back to ourselves. Mindscapes exploring the themes of awareness, sense of self and freedom.

Made of recycled materials: reused wooden panels, wall paint leftovers, paper cutouts.

INNER HORIZON - This series of paintings, mainly oil on canvas, was inspired by French symbolist poetry vision of the ocean as a metaphor of the subconscious mind, and by the practice of mindfulness and meditation. Imaginary sea surfaces representing the mind experiencing moments of calm and stillness, inner horizons and unexplored spaces where to escape to for peace, awareness and acceptance.

WONDERING HEIGHTS - In this series of cityscapes/mindscapes lyrical skies represent collective dreams and desires drifting and sparkling above a brutalist concrete jungle. A tribute to the colourful power of imagination as a relief from everyday life urban greyness but also to the challenges and inputs to inner growth and self-discovery that life in the big city can expose to. 

SEPTEMBER 2019 INTERVIEW 

Paintings with recycled waste material, discover Stefano Pallara #ArtistOfTheWeek

by Agathe Guibé

 "I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex."  Oscar Wilde

 This quote defines in some way Stefano's personality and the reason he started painting years ago. Colourful but nostalgic, Stefano's paintings are his shelter, his "freedom and catharsis". Stefano is originally from the South of Italy but has been living in London for decades now. His work revolves around themes such as the definition of identity, introspection and freedom, merged into landscapes like the Mediterranean Sea and its dazzling light. 

Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and how you started painting?

"My name is Stefano and I'm Italian. I grew up in a very traditional family where out-of-the-ordinary behaviour was not allowed. I received a strict upbringing, expressing my creativity wasn't really encouraged, and I was only allowed to play with typical children's games. I wasn't interested in cliché boys' games like football, fighting and plastic guns, because of the sense of violence and competitive nature I perceived in them. Drawing was my way out, a creative space where I could play with whatever I wanted, freeing myself from the constant repression imposed by the world around me. In real life, I was isolated but in my sketchbook, I was never alone. I started drawing animals, flowers, plants, cities and landscapes, queens, witches, wizards, angels... and it never really stopped. Painting became a part of my life,  and now as an adult, I find in the creative act the same sense of freedom and catharsis that I discovered as a child. My childhood was dark and it left a black hole inside me. Painting is a language I use to have a dialogue with the loneliness I experienced in those years and to accept it. In the past, I tried to fill that hole in various ways but with no success. Painting allows me to leave that hole as it is but to build a new world all around it. Loneliness is a recurring theme in my paintings but being an 'outsider' also generates an exhilarating sense of freedom: the lightness of not having to conform to anything, the liberating detachment of deviating from the norm."

Was there any event that influenced your artistic path?

"The technological progress of recent years with digital photography and the increasingly sophisticated software for image manipulation, have definitely had an impact on the type of technique I developed: a mixed-media of acrylic, oil, and collage of digital images. I travel a lot around the world and like everyone else, I take many photographs. I find it extraordinary that modern technology allows me to incorporate fragments of my life into my work, share the magic of faraway places that I was lucky to visit and infuse the picture with a new life. My artistic evolution has also been influenced by my growing interest in environmental protection... 

To see the complete interview google en/blog/artist-of-the-week-stefano-pallara