The Leopard

Concept

My first play-ground mate was a tree. I grew up in a rather lonely childhood surrounded by nature in my mother's private garden secluded from the mayhem of the world. My deep connection with nature, combined with the loneliness stimulated my fantasy to build up an imaginary world. The vacuum of a human relationship filled by my growing creativity triggered to fulfil the emptiness with colours, stories, imaginary beings and fantasy shapes. An arid soil was my foundation for a fertile imagination where I developed my artistic perception like a "third eye" shedding light into the darkness. I started early just after overcoming the age of a toddler drawing horses, pirates, Zorro and other marvels. I grew up mainly surrounded by female figures: by the record my mother, my cousins, 9 aunts. My father who was unanimously recognised mastering an outstanding singing voice vanished quite suddenly out of my life. His artistic sensibility is something I although inherited. I can still recall waking up in the morning at the echo of his soothing and harmonious voice sounding in my mind like a warm embrace while singing a beautiful Napolitean tune named la "La Montagna" (the Mountain). However excelling in a different artistic field, I can feel how he transmitted his musical pathos into the touch of my brush through his DNA, influencing my way of painting with the ancient Italic classical heritage still running in my veins. At that time when I still hadn't developed much awareness of my skills and knowledge of what I was doing, the first recognition of my dawning talent came from a Lady deemed to be an art connoisseur by the pictorial circles of the time. I remember how she claimed to notice already plenty of action and dynamos embedded in my early stage drawing and painting attempts. In my nineteens, I learnt to appreciate the French impressionists and then the renaissance masters, especially Masaccio. Driven by passion and total devotion to shape and colours my pictorial ability took a remarkable leap towards a constant growing inspiration. I didn't paint to chase fame, accolades nor money, left alone one exception when at the age of 14, I remember that a compelling thought popped up from nowhere: I didn't want to end up my life anonymously or die without leaving a legacy to the world. Surely I yearned to be remembered for having delivered during my existence something of substantial value to humanity. In the late 80s, I started a classical Greek-inspired cycle, portraying scenarios with sculptures in a wide range of styles, including Classical, Hellenistic, Minoic and Cycladic art. The inspiration gained from the full immersion in those historical eras was overwhelmingly corroborating: the statues appeared to take life under my brush while the mystical atmosphere of those eras captured my soul in rapture. I never lacked the inspiration, to be honest, but during that period the creative flow was so powerful that I perceived it as an uncontrolled flow of energy streaming down to the painting. In conjunction with that blessed inspirational connection, I was practising a spiritual discipline regarding the "liberation of the thought". A meditational technique based on disciplining the clarity of thinking according to Rosenkreutz methods and Aristotelic standards. The discipline stands in between the Hindustan Yoga and western logic and reason. The encounter with Lassi Nummi and Riita Harjunen wasn't by chance. They were both on the same wavelength and on a similar spiritual pathway. A common purpose united us regarding inner freedom, liberty and independent thinking. In Marc' Aurelius eyes I could see the tragic of the ancient world, the incapability of the human being, trapped into subjectivity to reach a higher consciousness and develop a more objective insight. The objectivity of a crystal clear reason controlling the overemotional wave. Today his message is more than ever of the actual importance: the survival of our civilization based on evidence, reason, liberty is heavily compromised. My favourite artworks have secret meaning and logic: the meeting point between earth and heaven. "Five persons walk in the night", "The future is coming towards us", "Sintesi", "La Domenica delle Palme", are my most representative paintings forming the backbone of my core artistic values. I won't pretend to reach the heart of every person on earth. I hope my contribution to the art will add an objective standard of beauty and aesthetics reflecting the necessity of objectivity in the modern world, to counterbalance the fallacy of relativism and subjectivity of the postmodern world vision. Predictions on the trajectory of the art market are hard to make but coherently to my previous statements, I wish that the art market inflated by subjective evaluations due to the subjectivism of relativism that hijacked the art will get back to common sense. I think that western culture and Indian culture have much in common. A continuous exchange of values has been enriching each other through centuries. West and east still need each other if they want to continue to thrive. From So Cultures Magazine interview the World of Enrico Garff