The painting of the Madonna by the eighteenth-century Veronese artist Antonio Balestra always hung above my mother’s bed and consequently in front of my eyes for many years. It is now the subject of comparison for a new painting of mine.

This is the painting that I knew and encountered for all those years, whose colours that had deteriorated and yellowed over time. My painting is the result of working with these colours as they are today.

And it is only after having crystallised it in this way that I will have it restored.

The Balestra “Madonna” has become the propulsive force of one of my paintings. Its palette pushed mine towards these pinks, oranges, browns, petrol greens and blues. The colours that were separate in my mother’s painting are mixed in mine.

The final work, a diptych, consists of my “Acceleration” and the photographic reproduction of Balestra’s painting. 

(Written in 2020)