The ocean
The colors of eastport, maine (2013-2024)
A project that follows my research on the colors and history of the Atlantic Ocean. Eastport is the easternmost city in the United States and for this reason the rising sun, the dawn is particularly spectacular. The color studies were painted on recycled material. First landscape with the title Islands on salt bags, artificial youta, then on Dacron nautical sails. The sails were then exhibited in the city of Eastport as street art. The sails are actually part of a larger project, a dance performance with choreographer Liz Gerring and musician Eve Beglarian. This project is called Working the Waters. It started with a workshop produced by the local museum, The Tide Institute,. The Project is based on Liz Gerring's dance movements , related to my painted sails to remind us of the power of nature; and to the original music by Eve Beglarian based on the sirens of the sardine factories that populated this part of the East Coast of the USA.
VOGLIO VIAGGIARE SU UNA NAVEPER DIPINGERE IL MARE (SAILING AWAY TO PAINT THE SEA) (2012-2013)
"In 2012 Vittoria Chierici tackled the sea, the place of movement par excellence: masses of water that ceaselessly change their state, even when they seem to be totally becalmed. The sea (as sailors have always thought) seems to be alive with its own inscrutable driving force. Vittoria Chierici decides to “paint the sea”. In order to do so, the artist deploys a very suggestive, very contemporary strategy. She prepares a Letter of intent to clarify her goals, for herself and for others: “Wanting to paint the sea does not necessarily mean doing seascapes: it is a symbolic concept, and it means taking liberties, outside the schemes of a system where art is fun but, at times, repetitive. Painting, furthermore, is a way of thinking in colours. I have already found some pictorial concepts with which to begin. For example, the use of depth of field, in the filmic sense of the term, in place of perspective used in the graphic sense. An idea already applied to the series of the ‘Battle of Anghiari’ […]. In painting, the sea has nearly always been seen from the coast, from a certain distance. The light of the squalling sea, from Turner to Van Gogh. The infinite space, from Füssli to Friedrich and Winslow Homer. I would like to change this vantage point. Or, more precisely, to discover another vantage point”.
—Francesco Matteo Cataluccio, Invetario #7, p. 148, Mantova 2013
