drawings charcol, soft pastel
540x750cm
I was born and I grew up in Dignano, Istria the home town of olive oil.
Since I was a child, I ve always been fasinated by the olive tree.
There is something about the olive tree that has always intrigued me, captured my fantasy.
I remember the long walks in the countryside with my father, admiring the old olive trees arround my home town.
I remember the game we used to play, running from one olive tree to onother and discovering in them an infinity of shapes and forms: a ballerina streaching her arms, a bird with its open wings. a sleeping dog , a monster trying to attac us...
Our immagination would run free in the fields and we would be happy.
And then fullfilled with that happiness we would lay down on the grass closed to the olive tree and I would discover the power and the energy of the twisted trunk, the ballerina would disapper in the rich greenish brawn texture and we wolud be taken by the infinity of wonderful tones, colours and textures.
Today,thirty years and more later, admiring, in my garden in Casa Rosina, this wonderful livig sculpture I can`t not think of the happiness of those far away days, the lafther and the love we shared.
And I still see in the secred trees the beautiful shapes I discovered when I was a child, and I still stop and put my hand gently on their trunk to feel again the textures and colours my father had shown me.
I can then absorb the wisdom, the glory, the peace, the power, the pureness of the ancient tree and I can sill feel at peace, purifed.
Olive tree, 2009
In my "Olive Tree" drawings I tried to cupture the pureness of the olive tree shape: a simple white siluette. The richness and abundance of its coulor and texture have been sapareted and explored in the background.
It has been a powerful experiance, after so many years, to walk and run in the countryside arround my home town again, without my father now, he has long ago gone to the "next room", and rediscover in the eternal trees the little old friends of my chilhood and been wrapped in the spring breeze, by my father voice again when laying under our old olive tree.
I hope my drawings are going to give justice to the old sacred trees.
