I have often spent time on how I should go about my job, the search on the landscape, what being a landscape painter today is all about. Landscape painter? What on earth does that mean? ( it’s also quite embarrassing to say such a word! ) a figurative side: wherever is the interest and whoever can still be thrilled by it? Of course, decorating still holds water and in some households a landscape may be missing somewhere? Most likely the landscape painter still manages to churn out pleasant scenes, relaxing, easy, which do not bother, which you can place anywhere and may turn out to be perfect wall-paper and once hung up, one may well forget about them. This is often the case and it saddens me to see these paintings: empty, undemanding, produced for entertainment or to kill time, by practising the tricks of the trade ( manual ability and mastery ) in the making of a work to which we have turned our attention.

Strangely enough, whenever I think about landscape on canvas I always see prematurely the obvious, the banal, what has already been done and seen. So I ask myself how I should tackle the next painting; I muse over when and why I started out in the first place, since I am not very fond of nature painters; the most popular ones have tired me and I have got hooked on few.
I must, talking about myself, tell you that I have become a painter in the end since I gave myself no alternatives. I made that decision at seven after watching a boy portray the view of a mountain; I was thrilled and bewitched. And I have never imagined doing anything else in life ever since.

Why on earth a landscape painter? There’s a lot out there and I have tried to explore other paths and look for other contents which do make a stand, but when on canvas, they seem to me uncertain, confused and inconsistent. I suppose most of us have this unbearable, inexpressible uneasiness which calls for a language that would provide it with shape and body; in doing so we would be able to see and perceive its origin, which stems form our unconscious.

I have painted to get to know the world, to look into it through painting, drawing, and so I have portrayed trees, stones, fruits, flowers, rivers, marinas, woods and face portrays and more… then, much to my surprise, I found out something rather obvious: if I chance to have contents I can place them in any receptacle be it a landscape or whatever; it’s all there, at hand, magnificently laid out; it’s all about picking and choosing and, through fragments of reality, we can speak about emotions, portray them on canvas and mirror ourselves to make sure we can pick out the superficiality of things; faces, bodies and objects shed their skin in which we attempt to ferret out the soul of the universe that we would imbue in ours.

Now I know why I am a figurative painter: being permanently stunned by the world, the light, the darkness, the beauty, faces’ irresistible charm, the gestures; ugly, beautiful, tall, short, young, old people; and, like a relentless ruminant, I have painted and drawn, chewed and chewed again images until they were mine. Surprise has turned into the main content of my life, and there’s no sun, sunset, rain or storm, laughter or crying, whisper or shout that will not leave a mark or fill my days. Yes, surprise is the content and painting the tool by which I tell people about my life and the world I live in.
I am greatly indebted to magnificent painters that I have loved and still do, who have left visible marks on my works and I thank them for coming my way. Not to say that I have somehow been orphaned, they did come along! It was enough watching and analysing them, also copying them so as to find out the answer (if not all) to the reason why I have chosen the landscape.
Why not?

Oliviero Masi