Interview with Mara Montagna
I'm Mara Montagna and I'm a painter.
I am passionate about painting and in recent years this has become my main activity in which I am trying to develop my personal style. I have always loved painting and drawing since I was little but my school and work paths led me to teaching for 42 years.
I managed to bring painting back into my life by attending evening school at the art high school in my city. This was a very nice experience of learning but also of sharing and exchange which allowed me to give painting a professional look. Becoming an art teacher legitimized me to consider myself a painter, no longer a hobbyist. This pushed me to search for my artistic identity. I began to interact with the outside world by having my first exhibitions in local and then national galleries, such as Palermo, Milan, Forlì, Cesenatico, Genoa, Mantua. Receiving positive feedback, I continued to expand into international showcases such as the Luxembourg Art Prize, or the MEAM in Barcelona, also exhibiting with Effetto Arte in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Washington. I am present among the artists of the Singulart, Gigarte and Contemporary art curator magazine sites. A space was dedicated to me in the program "The second life, heaven can wait" on Rai3 broadcast on 1 April 2024.
Some of my works are published in Italian national art yearbooks and catalogs such as ART NOW and Artisti 2024 and 2025.
Mara, growing up in a countryside setting surrounded by natural beauty has clearly influenced your work. How do you balance the raw, spontaneous wonder of childhood memories with the structured techniques and tools you’ve mastered as a professional artist?
I grew up in the country, with the opportunity to freely explore the environment without adult control, with a lot of time to spend alone or with a group of peers because mine was a beautiful and very free childhood. This allowed me to sharpen my spirit of observation, pay close attention to details and ‘see’ what is around me. I learnt to recognize many plants and flowers, to follow the lives of domestic and wild animals, to be fascinated by the nuances of a sunset, to use whatever was available to solve problems, to have fun with nothing by inventing new games, to use the tools of the adults, to not stop in the face of fatigue and pain, and to have faith in my own possibilities.
All this has given me a very useful store of creativity from which I draw to try to represent what interests me. My wealth of childhood experiences and knowledge is a great asset and has served me well throughout my life. The professional techniques and tools I have learnt since then have provided me with the means to express this potential in a wide range of expressive possibilities.
Your art often focuses on the authentic female figure and her expressiveness. What draws you to the feminine form as a recurring subject, and how do you see its role evolving in your future works?
I am proud to be a woman. Femininity belongs to me and gives me the vision with which I read reality. I believe I recognize the moods and feelings of other women. I know what a Little girl, a girl, a woman or a mother and now, given my age, a grandmother can feel. I know what leads us to fight and what is really important to us. Furthermore, I was educated and imprinted by the examples of the courageous women in my family who were also heroic role models for me.
In my region, there were the ‘rezdore’, the women who run the household and who were able to manage the whole large and complex patriarchal family. They were the true heads of the family. All this leaves a mark: it is female identity and pride.
But this does not forget the heart, because feelings are very important to me. I believe they will also be present in my future work because feelings express the reasons for our living and tinge it with emotional richness. This is common to every individual and I like to represent universal feelings that affect everyone. However, the fact remains that I think more spontaneously of the feminine. For the future, current events will provide me with inspiration.
Your use of bright colors and strong contrasts evokes powerful emotional responses. How do you approach the psychological interplay of color in your pieces, and what role does it play in telling the stories within your art?
Color is the strongest dominant in my work. Color has to be bright, strong and contrasting to represent me fully. Sometimes I try to choose a more moderate range but in the end I change it because that is not me. Color must touch, excite and overwhelm. I would never give up this strength. Even the choice of mixed techniques with acrylic and collage reflects my expressive urgency. I have to work with fast, quick-drying techniques that give me the result immediately. In fact, when I start a work, I finish it very quickly, sometimes at the expense of precision, but I believe it retains its expressive power. The telling of stories enriches what I do with imagination, makes it at times poetic and childlike. Childhood is a world I have loved very much and that I still love, it represents me because the child I was is still alive in me and wants to have her say.
Integrating fabric and collage into your paintings creates a tactile, almost three-dimensional experience. What inspired you to adopt this technique, and how do you see it deepening the viewer’s interaction with your work?
I had already tried at various times the use of these materials but I must say that it was the discovery of Mickaeline Thomas' work that made the light bulb go on! Here's how I could use fabrics! Inspired by this I then found my way of integrating the two techniques: acrylic and collage.
I like complexity. I really admire the elegance of one beautiful stroke but I am not a minimalist, simple and linear things are not for me.
Fabric can enrich what I imagine even more. Its weaves, its yarns, the different textures, the beautiful colors that I find on the stalls of flea markets inspire me and I like to go and find them as if they were a little treasure. Combining them is the most fun part of my work, I would even say sometimes daring. And precisely because what I want to express must have character, I get a great contribution from them. I hope that this aspect is also perceived by the viewer.
Your art navigates a delicate balance between the real and the idyllic. How do you decide where to draw the line between realism and abstraction, and what do you hope this interplay reveals to your audience?
Imaginary and dream belong to us as much as reality. For me they have the same importance and sometimes help us to bear reality and make it acceptable. Fantasy thank goodness exists and is an engine of life. I am certainly not the only one to maintain this fantasy experience, and I believe that there may also be someone in the audience who can recognize themselves. We can reach new goals because we have been able to imagine, dream or wish for them. I don't think there are real boundaries between reality and imagination but rather interactions because one reinforces the other.
Growing up in Parma and studying in Italy, you’re deeply connected to a rich artistic heritage. How do Italian art traditions and your personal cultural background shape your vision and practice?
I would say it can be summed up in having naturally received an education in beauty. We have beauty everywhere in Italy and it becomes a necessity to find it every day, just as an education in music leads us to love it and live it every day. The aesthetic sense of decoration is also natural to us. Taste is conditioned by it and the refinement of combinations as well. When I work I am never satisfied, often what I do still seems incomplete if I do not achieve what for me is a rich and varied result. I look for a complexity that must be harmonious, beautiful and with a certain aura of the unreal and mysterious. I can also be daring by making improbable juxtapositions but what I do must remain ‘beautiful’ for me anyway. Sometimes I admire those who manage to break the mold and destroy all that. I admire this in others but this deconstruction does not belong to me.
With twenty years of teaching art and image, how has your experience as an educator influenced your artistic journey? Do you find parallels between guiding students and exploring new techniques in your own work?
Teaching art has been a wonderful experience. I have been lucky enough to introduce the children and young people to true artistic immersions by letting them experience and learn about techniques and artists unknown to them. It was also an opportunity to show them different, original, unconventional and unexpected visions of representing reality, thus stimulating their divergent thinking. Art education hours were the most anticipated and probably among the most enjoyed. They certainly provided wonderful playful moments of expressive freedom. For some of them, it was the revelation of their artistic qualities that later became a professional choice, but even for those who did not possess great expressive means, it was certainly enjoyable and fun. In any case, I think that the idea remained with the children that art is approachable by everyone because it is everyone's right to express themselves and there are no limits. Art is a very beautiful and important thing that educates us and makes us appreciate aesthetics. It is a state of mind, it is the way we look at things and look for beauty and harmony in everyday things: in a flower or in a sky or in the smile of someone you love, and this should be able to belong to everyone.
Art belongs to everyone. ‘Give us bread, but give us roses’ said Rosa Luxembourg and I firmly believe this. It is also a very effective way of symbolically expressing content that, thanks to its language, affects us deeply. Every time I made a new teaching proposal, I inevitably did it to myself as well, adding new stimuli to my projects. I certainly learnt a lot too and I am not done learning yet, there are still many things I want to discover and try.
You emphasize the use of textures through collage and fabric. How do you perceive the relationship between texture and emotion, and how does this guide your artistic choices?
Maybe it is because there were seamstresses in my family and that as a child I played with scraps of fabric, sometimes precious ones, which stimulated my imagination, fact is that I always found fabrics exciting. Holding a piece of embroidered lace in my hands made me imagine princesses at the ball, or rich ladies at the theatre or other worlds very different from my own. In addition to this imaginary component, fabrics already have a structural part in which colors, textures and weaves are an intrinsic expressive richness. I am fascinated by them and with them I create new worlds in which everything is revealed, even emotions. In particular, it is the colors that speak to me and I play with them following combinations that I create, harmonious or contrasting depending on what I want to emphasize. Into this comes fabric decorations and patterns that open up new paths and possibilities. It is a mix that I find very exciting and creative. I must say, however, that textures in general fascinate me, even those found in nature, for example the grain of a piece of wood, the veins of a stone, a leaf or those of rust on iron or those marked by the traces of the wear and tear of time. In that case, I let the simplicity and beauty of the object I have in front of me speak for itself by intervening to a minimum, as Wabi sabi teaches us.
While your work draws from nature and traditional themes, it also feels contemporary and relevant. How do you navigate the tension between timeless, universal elements and the demands of a modern artistic audience?
Current events often offer food for thought. I think we cannot remain to so many great tragedies that happen in the world or to wars and misfortunes that speak to our conscience. In particular, I am disturbed by the very serious situation of women in so many countries. To see women denied fundamental rights and their bodies denied and mutilated outrages me deeply. As well as the violence on the weak, on children and on all victims, upsets me intensely. I feel the urgency to talk about these realities but I choose not to enter into the brutality of the facts. I prefer to highlight what is denied, or what is faced with courage or what is lost. The images I use must be effective and beautiful because beauty for me is like a lifeline capable of giving hope even in the telling of terrible tragedies. When I paint I think about expressing myself and what is important to me. I am not very interested into pleasing the needs of the public, I express what strikes me. One may agree with it or not.
Having explored multiple techniques and achieved recognition across various platforms, how do you envision the next phase of your artistic journey? Are there unexplored themes, mediums, or collaborations you are eager to pursue?
In my future I know for sure that there will be serious health problems and therefore I don't know until when I can continue to be who I am but until then, I will try with all my strength not to lose the desire to do things, to express myself as best I can, without abandoning the search for experiences that can evolve and renew my artistic path. If I will have more physical limitations then I will begin to discover new techniques and explore new ways in which I can paint. I want to pursue life by trying to live it as intensely as possible and keep in it all that I can that is beautiful, important and exciting. I hope that painting will remain a part of it until the end.
