Antonio Di Cristofaro

Roots

I was born in 1946 in Castelnuovo Vomano, in the province of Teramo, in the valley of the river Vomano. On one side the Gran Sasso closes the horizon, white with snow until spring; on the other, a few kilometres away, lies the Adriatic Sea. It was a world poor in things but extraordinarily rich in colour: the yellow of wheat in June, the red of peppers drying on the balconies, the dark green of the olive trees on the hills, the blue of certain August skies I have never seen anywhere else.

As a child I drew everywhere: in school exercise books, in the margins of newspapers, on the paper the bread came wrapped in. My mother kept those sheets in a tin box. There were no museums in the village, nor painters; there were the holy images in church and the calendars hanging in the kitchen. They were enough for me.

The workshop

At fifteen I became an apprentice in a carpentry workshop. There I learned almost everything I know: to respect the material, to prepare a surface, to mix varnishes and stains, to wait for things to dry. Above all I learned patience, the first virtue of anyone who paints.

In the 1970s I opened my own workshop. By day I built doors, windows and furniture; in the evening, once the shavings were swept away, I picked up my brushes. I painted on offcuts, on old cupboard doors, on whatever came to hand. Even today I build and paint the frames of my paintings myself, one by one: it is the part of the carpenter that has never left me.

Painting

For many years I painted landscapes and still lifes, the way one learns to. Then, in the 1990s, I discovered acrylic paint, and everything changed. I paint with acrylics on canvas. I love their speed, the way they can be poured, dripped, layered and cracked, made thick as earth or light as a veil. Every painting is born from a dialogue with the material: I offer a gesture, and the colour answers in its own way.

My research moves between two poles. On one side, the free gesture: the drips, the spirals, surfaces that ripple and crack. On the other, the rigour of form: the geometries of light, the bands of colour breathing on white. And now and then I return to the figure, to still life, to train the eye.

A painting is finished only when someone looks at it.

The studio

In 2008 I closed the workshop and turned it into my studio, here in Castelnuovo Vomano. The carpenter's bench is still there, covered with jars of paint instead of tools. The walls are white, and the light comes in through a large north-facing window — the steadiest light, the one painters have always loved.

I work mostly in the morning, when the light is clean and so is my mind. I often paint with the canvas lying flat on the bench, so the colour can flow; at other times I set it on the easel and look at it for days before touching it.

Exhibitions and encounters

Over the years I have shown my work in solo and group exhibitions in Abruzzo and central Italy: town halls, village art festivals, small galleries, summer fairs where paintings hang under the porticoes. Those are the shows I love most, because people stop, ask questions, tell their own stories.

This website is my permanent exhibition: the door of my studio open to anyone, from anywhere in the world. The paintings leave Castelnuovo Vomano carefully packed and travel to collectors in Italy and abroad; anyone passing through Abruzzo is always welcome in the studio.