The Italian Miniatures (2000-2001)
statement on this series
Inspired by my experiences as both a resident and a tourist of Italy over the past 15 years, in this series I documented colors of a town, personalities of saints and sinners, birds and botanicals, abstraction in a Fra Angelico painting, crossing signs and mosaics. The pieces are the size of postcards; Each combines watercolor/gouache paintings of fragments of frescoes with actual old Italian photographs, sections of sent souvenir postcards. The pieces below were completed in 2000-2001.
In Passage of the Dead, Mary Magdalene recoils over the dead Christ while painted tomb figures motion towards her and birds flee in a fragmented piece of a postcard. Or in Roman Crosswalk I, the silver-leafed silhouetted figures in a Roman street sign are starkly contrasted by men and women being tortured in an apocalyptic scene. The paintings' intimate scale are meant to entice viewers to closely examine and connect the combined imagery into visual metaphors.
In time a memory or experience of a place or painting blurs, fragments, or might be rewritten in our memory. As tourists we turn to our photo albums, collected postcards and souvenirs to refresh our memories. The series, Italian Miniature Paintings, is a journal, my album. Through these miniature compositions I re-contextualize their original sources into postcard-size souvenir paintings or “material memories.” These paintings reinforce how when we travel to the same places and collect common souvenirs and postcards, we share nostalgia for a certain era, place or even memory.
—Emily Trespas
In Passage of the Dead, Mary Magdalene recoils over the dead Christ while painted tomb figures motion towards her and birds flee in a fragmented piece of a postcard. Or in Roman Crosswalk I, the silver-leafed silhouetted figures in a Roman street sign are starkly contrasted by men and women being tortured in an apocalyptic scene. The paintings' intimate scale are meant to entice viewers to closely examine and connect the combined imagery into visual metaphors.
In time a memory or experience of a place or painting blurs, fragments, or might be rewritten in our memory. As tourists we turn to our photo albums, collected postcards and souvenirs to refresh our memories. The series, Italian Miniature Paintings, is a journal, my album. Through these miniature compositions I re-contextualize their original sources into postcard-size souvenir paintings or “material memories.” These paintings reinforce how when we travel to the same places and collect common souvenirs and postcards, we share nostalgia for a certain era, place or even memory.
—Emily Trespas