Gianna Putrino: Imagined Realities
Cave 1, 2024, oil on shaped wood panel, 37 x 34.5 inches
Artist Gianna Putrino, photo courtesy of Sam McCoy
Assemblage (Still), 2022, oil on shaped wood panels, 60 x 42 inches
Halcyon, 2023, oil on shaped wood panel, 48 x 40 inches
Untitled, 2023, oil on shaped wood panels, 46 x 30 inches
Cave 2 (Bloom), 2024, oil on shaped wood panel, 36 x 32 inches
Cave 3, 2024, oil on shaped wood panel, 21.5 x 20.5 inches
Website: www.giannaputrinoart.com
Instagram: @gputrino
Contemporary artist Gianna Putrino explores expectation, nostalgia, and imagined memory in her organic painted forms. Drawing inspiration from nature's extremes, her color palette strips away intricacies in value, texture, and tonal structure, offering a simplified portrayal of grand natural encounters.
How did your creative journey begin?
My creative journey began as a child when my only aspiration was to be making art. Being creative was an essential part of my identity and I knew that I would not be happy pursuing any other path. At 10 years old I made a self-portrait where we had to imagine ourselves in our future careers, and with brown craft paper and tempera paint, I depicted an image of myself as an artist. After graduating with my BFA and later, my MFA, I began to focus my practice and create a trajectory for myself and my career.
Where do you find inspiration for your work?
My work is inspired by the landscapes of my youth. Moving to NYC sparked my creation of fantastical landscapes in reaction to urban life and leaving childhood behind. These landscapes are entirely fictional, drawing from memory, nostalgia, and fantasy. There is a difference between land which is “earth” and what is “landscape”, in that the latter is loaded with wishful thinking. In the words of Simon Schama, “Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.” My work seeks to create a disrupted space between memory, reality, expectation, and experience. The oversimplification of shape and exaggeration of color, allows me to project my own notions of presence into landscapes that can not be found on any map.
How has your work evolved over the last few years?
My work has undergone significant evolution in recent years. I initially explored landscapes through palette knife painting, creating expressive mountain scapes with negative spaces in simple flat colors. I then transitioned to painting exclusively in flat shapes with minimal color variation on tondo panels. Once I encountered a pivotal moment when frustration led me to "cut out" the sky shape from a composition on a panel using a jigsaw. Since then, I've structured all my panels as landscape shapes, shifting my focus toward sculpture and installation while maintaining flat painting in the interiors.
What does a typical day in the studio look like for you, and how has your art practice grown or changed?
My practice has transformed significantly to incorporate a makeshift woodshop into my former paint-only studio. I had to learn woodworking skills and gather materials to accommodate this change alongside my painting process. To manage the workload, I now separate building and painting tasks, dedicating weeks or months solely to woodworking before letting the literal dust settle and transitioning back to painting. Planning and setting deadlines have become crucial to ensure completion of projects before restarting the process over again.
Which experiences have impacted your work as an artist?
I think the largest impact on my work would be my move from rural upstate New York to NYC and/or the transition from childhood to adulthood that led to the desire to create imagined realities and interest in escapism. Another impact on my work was the realization that I did not have to adhere to the restrictions of the edges of a store bought panel and that I had greater control over my landscapes, perhaps as a symbol of reaching a point of stability and control in my own life as well.
How has social media impacted your work?
Social media has helped me to discover the many artists that I now admire. I think that we are all influencing each other, whether we are working in physical proximity to one another or we are only connecting through the internet, I think our visual languages are mixing and inspiring always.
How did you develop your own style?
My style has developed into an increasingly more minimalist approach. I am looking more at japanese landscape painting lately and I think there is a big influence from animation and video game art styling. I am drawn to the quiet and I want my visual language to have a sense of peace and meditative stillness for viewers to escape to.