Welcome on my website!

 

I’m Mariaceleste Arena, drawer and painter from Messina, Sicily.

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I’m currently working with different techniques, especially traditional ones such as pastels,watercolors, acrylics, ink and bic pens.

For a few years I started working with digital techniques, manipulating photos and artworks made by me and making illustrations and paintings on the open source software Krita.

I love experimenting and I’ve tried different expressive mediums among which the artist’s book with handmade paper, mosaic made with recycled materials and also 3D printing.

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Over the years I’ve tried different artistic experiences,such as:

the Infiorata di Noto in which I had the pleasure and honor of participating as a student of the Academy of Fine Arts in May 2016

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I made urban redevelopment through murales and paintings together other artists in local sphere

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I’ve collaborated and made illustrations for art columns and co-working projects

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I currently paint and draw fantastic creatures mixed together inspired by animals symbol of Mother Goddess of Life and Regeneration, taken by the books written by the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas.

Among the creatures that I depict are presents also visionary dinosaurs, often fused with plants. They’re always been one of my great passions in my childhood and that I’ve always wished to immortalize them one day.

The animals that impressed me most of all in my artistic research are been certainly the elephants, for different motivations: first of all the bond with my land, Sicily. “Dwarf elephants” were presents in the island millions of years ago before the appearance of humans.

Other important references to elephants and Sicily are surely the myth of Cyclops in Greek’s mythology, the war elephants during Punic Wars and the visionary elephants made by the artist Giovanni Cammarata from Messina.

 

Other references to this artistic genre are taken from the artworks of Mariano Pietrini, Ivan Generalić and Ivan Večenaj, Croatian artists belonging to the naive school in Hlebine: an union between atmospheres and feelings of Northern and Southern Europe.

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Even the insects such as butterflies and cockroaches are subjects that help me to elaborate emotions and negative events; in particular cockroaches are creatures that I depict to give shape to my nightmares and my fears. Butterflies are instead insects that have been linked since ancient times to regeneration, the fragility of life and hope.

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I think that many of my works are often full of fantasy and irony, even sometime are presents melancholy traits.

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Good reading and thanks for your attention!

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