Rachele Moscatelli is an Italian artist currently represented by the Art Gallery Studio d’Arte Cannaviello in Milan. Moscatelli has always worked in the figurative world: collage, engraving, monotype and digital photographic manipulation are the techniques she prefers. In particular, Moscatelli recreates female subjects taken from the glossy pages of fashion magazines, isolated from their original context, transformed through collages and color stratifications.
KALTBLUT: When did you first start illustrating / what really pushed you to do so?
Rachele: My first “drawings” date back to my early childhood – when I was two. I have always drawn and I have always considered this language as the first means of expression to tell who I am and I was. It has never been a choice or an imposition but a natural necessity: generating images is my instinctive way of expressing. This is why I do not conceive a separation between what art is and what I am. Art is a language that I have felt inside even before knowing the word. Artistic studies came accordingly.
KALTBLUT: How would you describe your works with your own words?
Rachele: My work investigates human nature, in particular, it focuses on portraits. The subjects that I choose for my portraits are mainly women. Representing them is to me a way to establish a relationship and a continuous reflection with them. Female figures are manipulated through the use of repeated layers of color or colored cardboards applied on their faces in order to transform them into modern icons or pop masks. The layering of materials represents the progressive accumulation of my thoughts and ideas. Each figure thus takes shape layer after layer.
KALTBLUT: What medium/ tools do you feel most comfortable whit when creating your work?
Rachele: My work is based on painting, collage, chalcographic engraving, monotype, and digital photographic manipulation. These techniques relate my sign and color component: I paint, take photographs, cutout, build, transform, work on environments.
KALTBLUT: Your creations go from painting to collage… can you take us through your creative process… how have you first decided on which medium to use, work with each new pieces?
Rachele: I almost always plan my works in my mind for days: once I have worked out the idea, I put everything on paper. Otherwise, I act instinctively: one gesture leads me to the following one and so on. I am guided by what I see and what I feel. I need to get an intimate level of knowledge with the subjects I portray since they must become “mine”.
Subjects inspire me about one technique or another. There aren’t fixed rules, but I just rely on the feelings that images communicate. Collage allows me to put worlds together that can be normally distant and this is usually the basis for my works. Images that I cut out are mostly covered in oil paint or oil pastel; hence, I decide what to keep and what to cover completely. The color layering allows me to change the identities of the figure I choose. Some works are created only using oil painting. I really pay attention to the surface of works obtained through repeated overlapping and layering of color. The skin of the people portrayed is not only the object, the theme, the texture, but also the support on which I work through transformation. Paper and canvases are full of pores as for an intrinsic need to breathe.
KALTBLUT: Where do you get most of your inspirations?
Rachele: My subjects belong to fashion: my work is on female identity, always direct and never ideological. Ancient aesthetics is often the basis, but the ultramodern one is revealed in reversals that break images and allow them to float in an aseptic or made of signs space.
KALTBLUT: What message do you want to get out of your art?
Rachele: My women are strong, proud and aware of their inner beauty, their talents, their obsessions. They are hopeful, bright, cryptic, stubborn and sometimes distant. Their posture and their attitude recall the one in Renaissance portraits of noblewomen. This is the message I would like to share.
KALTBLUT: What is your ultimate goal?
Rachele: I would like to be able to make my work known; I want to continue improving with it, both personally and artistically.
KALTBLUT: How do you spend your days now with the quarantine?
Rachele: In these days of quarantine I try not to be discouraged, to be positive and bright. I organize my routine choosing activities that make me feel good: I teach art history lessons, I read a lot, I practice yoga and meditation, I take care of plants, I plan future works, I cook, I use creativity to remove bad thoughts. In June there will be my personal exhibition at the gallery Studio d’Arte Cannaviello. This plan makes me very happy and positive, hoping we will soon be able to go back to our everyday life.
KALTBLUT: How is the situation is affecting you, and your work?
Rachele: This critical situation has inevitably had consequences on my artistic production: I am thinking about the relationship between man and nature since I had never considered that nature could become a major actor in our history together with humankind. In the future, I think there will be a new relationship of coexistence between the two. Since humankind was forced to stay in their houses, nature has begun to reborn: air is cleaner, birds are singing, pollution has decreased, water has been repopulated by fish. I am thinking a lot about all this.
KALTBLUT: What do you wish for the future?
Rachele: For the future I want the world to change for the better, for greater care and responsibility. Personally, I wish I could grow on a professional and artistic point of view. I hope to meet interesting and stimulating people, to have the opportunity to show my works and make my art known.
Contact:
rachelemoscatelli.it
Instagram: @ray____bat
