Groundwork
Groundwork brings together painting, sculpture, ceramic, and light to explore the intertwined landscapes of Veneto—from its cultivated earth to the shifting waters of the Venetian lagoon. Through clay, sand, seaweed, and impressions of vegetables, the works move between landscape and abstraction, growth and excavation.
Groundwork
2026 - current
Oil, raw clay, seaweed, and sand on canvas and local stoneware
In Groundwork, the ground is both subject and substance. The project emerges from the landscapes of Veneto, moving between the cultivated countryside surrounding the artist’s ceramic atelier and the shifting waters of the Venetian lagoon. Raw clay, sand, and seaweed are worked directly into painted surfaces, allowing the landscape’s physical matter to enter the work itself.
The paintings draw upon the atmospheric tradition of Venetian seascapes, in which water, land, and sky dissolve into one another through light. Built through layering, abrasion, and excavation, their surfaces hold traces of pressure, movement, and time. Forms emerge and recede, evoking terrains that are simultaneously agricultural, maritime, bodily, and psychological.
Alongside the paintings, ceramic plates and illuminated forms carry impressions of vegetables grown from the land. These forms connect cultivation with making: the planting of a seed, the pressing of a vegetable into clay, and the transformation of earth through fire. Presented together, the paintings, sculptures, and lights consider the ground as a place of nourishment, labor, memory, and continual renewal—a surface we cultivate, build upon, extract from, and ultimately return to.