Where do you feel most "at home" creatively?
Creatively I am at home in Calabria. My family is fortunate enough to still have a home there. We're from a small town called Benestare, it looks down to the Ionian Sea and sits about 450m above sea level with the Aspromonte mountains behind us.
That view really concretes my colour palette, from the sky to the sea to the hills and olive trees. When I create there, I drop into a flow state almost by default.
That's in complete contrast to my studio in Fitzroy. It's right on Brunswick Street, far away from everything I'm referencing. There, painting comes with a kind of chaos. I think that chaos balances my approach to painting.
I'm still young, so the chaos will do for now. But I'm constantly imagining, planning, telling myself I'll return to Italy. It's a constant push and pull.
Honestly, Melbourne feels like convenience, things work, everything is as expected. Italy is the opposite. The excitement, the spontaneity of being able to function between that chaos and beauty, there's nothing like it.
Do you think your Italian family environment shaped how you tell visual stories?
I spent a lot of time at my Nonno and Nonna's house growing up. They lived in a white brick double-storey house outside there was blue and white tessellated tiles, brown decorative iron fencing, and a fountain out the front with horses and cupids. I would sit under the veranda counting all the cars that drove pass, the blue ones the red ones and so on.
Inside, paisley carpet, hand-painted stencils on the walls, a faux crystal chandelier. The house was full of religious icons and old photos from Italy. On top of the TV sat a statue of La Lupa with Romulus and Remus.
My Nonna was creative at heart. She had rooms full of fabric, she would sew, paint, draw. She didn't have the luxury of dedicating her life fully to art. She came from a different time. I feel like I'm an extension of that, being able to create is continuing our family story.
At the same time, they lived near a shopping plaza. I'd sneak off and dump coins into arcade machines, Street Fighter II, Ninja Turtles, Daytona.
And yeah, big family. I'm one of six, right in the middle. So there's always that energy of: "look, look, look I've got something to say." That carries into how I work.
Do those quieter landscapes influence how you think and make?
Growing up in the country landscape shaped everything. It gave me time, time to be bored, to build my own world, to develop my visual language. A lot of my imagery comes from there. I spend a lot of time with my Papa in the vineyard. He would find a stick, tie a string on it and walk around with it and I would pretend it was a puppy dog.
Until recently when I go back, I don't paint much there. I go camping with just a swag, minimal gear, not even a chair.
There's also a kind of sense of duality there. It's a land that isn't mine, it belongs to Indigenous Australians, and there are stories that aren't mine to tell. Learning and understanding that helps me understand my own place.
Then I go back to Calabria, to a place like Pietra Cappa, the largest monolithic rock in Europe. When I stand there and look from the mountains down to the sea, there's this deep sense of: "yeah… I belong here."
It makes me think how powerful that must be for Indigenous people here, to create stories on land that is truly theirs.
What feels important enough to turn into art right now?
Over the holidays in Mildura, I found an old France '98 soccer ball still in perfect condition considering it had been left about the yard. I used to kick that ball against the wall for hours. I even made an orange net bag with rope so I could carry it around and train.
It's objects like that I pull into my visual language, things I've had a direct relationship with. The axe my dad gave me. My car. Even a Ferrari, I've got a model of one and a tattoo of it on my leg.
Sometimes I imagine I'm building my own little museum of anthropology.
Where did your love of cars start?
Some of my earliest memories are watching F1 on TV, lying right up close, head propped on a pillow.
My brother and I shared a room with a Ferrari Testarossa poster on the wall. Meanwhile, the family car was a Pajero. I'd sit in the back reading the manual like it was a novel.
On weekends I'd wash it then take it for a drive "to get the water out of the gaps" … no licence. It was an excuse to take for a spin and visit my cousins or mates who lived in the area.
Later my brother built up an HK Monaro with 350 chev. I found the spare key and would take it up and down the street, absolutely terrifying myself. The birds would fall out the sky.
I'd sit in that car in the garage listening to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction soundtracks.
And I remember my uncle coming back from Hawaii with a photo of himself next to a Ferrari, saying: "one day I'll have one."
That all stuck.
If your art practice was a car?
This is where the duality comes in. I love a Testarossa, but I can't afford one. I'm still waiting for the big dogs at the NGV to give me a solo. (If you are a big dog, please get in touch.)
Until then, I drive an old Land Rover Defender 90. I bought it before prices went crazy.
I love the anti-modern, no-fuss approach. It's simple, practical.
If you ask a kid to draw a car, they'll draw something that looks like a Defender, vertical, horizontal, a couple circles.
That's kind of how I approach painting too.
If we walk into your studio, what do we see first?
I don't have one favourite painting, there's the one of my mum on the ride-on mower, the big Ferrari painting, portraits of bikes…
But honestly, the first thing I'd show you are my Nonna's drawings.
She's the root of it all.
What are you looking forward to?
The best time is now.
Now I'm focusing on entering art prizes, they're like scratchies. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you don't, but you've got to be in it. I would like to put an Archive show on, that's always sitting behind in my brain. I have so much work that I would love for folk to see.
I want to get back to Italy this year. In my mind I'm always moving back. I've been looking at residencies in Florence.
Last summer I met a group of creatives in Calabria. They have invited me to come and build something together there.
That's the direction.
