Sometimes I see these invisible signs, and through painting I try to make them visible. Even with eyes full of “cement and tears”. I believe the first look at all things has to be a wild look. From the one who doesn't classify, doesn't label. He sees the shadows and the lights, the contrasts and the harmony, and thus, he establishes a transparency, a letting himself see beyond. The next look has to be more refined, one that reads between the lines and looks for meanings invisible to the profane eye.

  And what meanings do I look for? To find out, I had to bare the soul, untie the body and assemble the fragments. As Nejar said, we need “insoluble areas of courage” to know who we are, taking off masks in front of the mirror and with a small shovel to remove layers. “We are not just what exists. There are layers that war. We are also what does not exist” (Carlos Nejar). And in this search for being and non-being, I try to establish contact.

  Possessing new eyes, looking at something as familiar as if it were the first time, is this the great secret of art: Possessing foreign eyes?

  One of the functions of art is to move us away from reality to immerse ourselves even more in it, and it forces us to recognize invisible things, things we haven't seen before.

  The landscape of my memory is underground, labyrinthine, macunaímic; formed of patches, made of unexpected details of space and windows that open to a previous time that serve as keys to reopen my past. I believe Vale Veneto was, and still is, a kind of path to the backyard of my house. As Lia Luft said, "I'm at the heart of a closing cycle."

  What is my landscape? When I answered that, I saw that I was hiding behind the mountains of Vale Veneto, borrowing from there a memory that was not mine.

  I realized that Vale Veneto did not belong to me. With that, I felt the need to look for my landscape.

  And I ask: did the landscape of Vale Veneto hide “my true landscape”? What is the meeting point between the two? Unfortunately I still don't have these answers, or rather I don't have them clearly.

  I found some clues. Possessing new eyes, looking at something as familiar as if for the first time, is this the great secret of art: Possessing foreign eyes?

Santa Maria, February 2003.