Barbara Busetto was, like Dino de Simone, a participant of the Italian-Dutch group exhibition in the MLB Galery in Amsterdam last January. In contrast to Dino de Simone, she doesn’t focus on the urban, the city, but the landscape, nature. Trees play a special role in her work.
Nice to note: her first painting lessons she had from Dino de Simone. After that she went to the Evening Art Academy of Brera, the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, to be taught in portraits, drawing, plaster and plastics. That was ten years ago. She liked drawing from her childhood, but she didn’t choose the path of art as a career. She followed another passion: languages. She mastered no less than seven languages. She became a headhunter and this she still is.
Attract observer into the painting
Barbara Busetto: “I select people. Not only in Italy. Also in other European countries: Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic. So I travel a lot for my job. It enables me to observe cultures. In the weekends, I’m going to another world, the world of landscapes and emotion.” When she paints, always with oil, she starts right on the canvas, no initial sketches.
“I need to feel something before I put my first brushstrokes. I want to canvey this emotion to the observer of the painting. The emotion I myself have influences the way I mix the colors. Usually violet, purple and green. I really want to attract the observer into the painting. Therefore I prefer a very big format. 1.50 till 1.80 meter. I want to give the observer the opportunity to relieve himself from his soul anxiety.”
Trees
Trees are always in her paintings. “Trees have a soul, like people. They also have a memory. Trees have a role between the earth and the sky, they act as a bridge. In each painting there is an area, usually in or around the centre, that the atmosphere gets a little vague. I want to give the observer the opportunity to cross into another world, comparable with the pit in which Alice – in Alice in Wonderland – disappeared in.”
There are a lot of paintings in one color. But this one color, usually blue or green, has a great number of variations. In the painting Seychelles there are 35 different greens.
Next to the large paintings she makes small paintings. Also with trees and water on it. She started with it six years ago. “They are like bricks, they are part of a series and always shown like series. Because they are bricklike is easy to make nice combinations.”
A free zone
Drawing she also still does. In the weekends as well, mostly in the evenings. The rest of the week she has another focus. Trying to find job solutions for people in a structured way. She benifits greatly from her artwork, she says. “It’s a very psychological job, the headhunting. Art makes me more creative, it gives me more arguments.
Asked about a key work she mentions the painting Rosso in Zittuto. It was in the newspaper Seculo XIX. You see a stones at the seaside in red and mystic wood in the background. “A good representation of Liguria. Liguria is full of historic traces.”
“Realm reigns” she says, when we end with her philosophy. “Art is free, a free zone where you can experience anything. I am really lucky that I can do this. I can represent at the canvas what I want to. represent. It is a great privilege.”
