Featured Artists

Artsy Shark is pleased to present the romantic, ethereal work of two Italian artists – Antonia and Fabio De Vann of Due Alberi.

The artists behind DUE ALBERI are Antonia and Fabio De Vann. We are partners in life and in art. Our work is about beauty. The beauty of nature, full of colors and mystery. It is also about passion for flowers and nature. Our models are flowers and plants, we work on flower photography series arranging every time different compositions for the shooting. This is our way not only to observe and contemplate nature, but also to reinterpret it. To feel the joyful beauty of a flower in all its gorgeousness. But also the delicate and wise beauty of the faded flower which is part of the flow of life. We like to capture the living act of nature in its splendor and in the beauty of its inevitable transformation.

Our view is influenced by several artistic experiences such as watercolor, acrylic and ink painting. We both come from families with an artistic background: since we were both little our respective parents have always somehow inspired us through music, art, painting, sculpture. Coming from studies and working experience in Architecture, Interior and Floral Design, we have developed a flower photography passion. Our inspiration derives from childhood memories of the intact nature of our two countries of origin, one from the beautiful city of Toronto Ontario Canada, the other from the old European city of Sofia. Our work is inspired also by the Italian Renaissance, Baroque, and mural paintings, Zen brush painting and the Japanese Ikebana. We use different kinds of flowers and plants, combining them with wire and other objects like pebbles and driftwood.

Our Atelier is now based in Rome, Italy in an old late 1920′s house, in the unique context designed on the model of the nineteenth century English Garden Cities. From our window, we see the graceful and giant Roman pine trees on the background of ancient houses colored in pale red, ochre, yellow, rain washed rusty orange Roman clay roof tiles, all bound by typical cobblestone streets. It is stunning to be immersed everyday in the mixture of landscapes that evolve continuously throughout the generous four Roman seasons.

What are your goals?

Our goals are very simple. What we really want is to be happy and have the opportunity to keep creating and expressing ourselves. Most of all we want to stay in tune with our creativity, bringing in this way happiness and joy to the people that appreciate our work. We like to represent the beauty of simplicity, of what surrounds us, of what nature has to offer. Our work is to capture nature and reflect it. In this manner we feel that our art is simply part of the everyday life, a way of bringing nature into everyone’s home.

What are you working on now?

We are working on new rose fine art print sets in red, yellow and white colors. They are inspired by the contemporary floral design and by the dynamism of the Italian Baroque paintings. We like to create a sense of movement “on the canvas”, using different flowers and plants and making them dance in different directions. We love experimenting combining flowers with wire and other objects like pebbles, driftwood, or vegetables. We have recently introduced larger print formats and we are experimenting home decoration products inspired by our floral art prints.

What inspires you?

We find our inspirations in nature and art. When you look for example at a forest, at a tree, or simply at a curling twig, apparently you may see a random chaos in it. But under the surface nature is perfect, and we enjoy discovering and representing it every time. Inspirations come regularly from our everyday life: a color, a book, a texture, a vegetable, a flower. Everything can be an inspiration, you need only to use all your senses to see and understand it. We are very lucky to live in such a beautiful place as Rome as we are immersed in all this variety of reds, yellows, plants, and flowers. We are inspired by the Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art, by the mural paintings and decorations that you can admire in Italy. We love Calder, Mondrian, Turner, Art Nouveau, Picasso, Andy Goldsworthy, Ross Bleckner. We are attracted by the Eastern aesthetics as well. It could be some Japanese kimono pattern, or a delicate Ikebana composition.

Featured Artist Patricia Gurgel-Segrillo is a native Brazilian, now living and working in Ireland. She talks about her journey and her diverse portfolio. Visit Patricia’s website for more information.

I started drawing from the age of 5 and carried on drawing ever since, later learning and practicing a diverse range of disciplines (i.e. painting, film animation, hat design etc), until eventually defined jewellery-making as my main practice 25 years ago. It’s been always my goal, whatever I did: to be my own boss and to work from home, as I do, in an experiment to have work/life mingle as much as possible. So far it’s been positive in both.

For my young daughter to see a healthy, creative and empowered relationship with work (which unfortunately is mostly the exception when I look around) might be my greatest legacy.

I try to blur the boundaries of Design – Craft – Art. Good thought and good design should go into each piece. The hand-crafted aspect and the skill which it requires as well as my artistic expression- all three are important to me.

Integrity and kindness runs throughout all I do: from answering emails to my overall attitude towards the commercial aspects of my practice as well as gentleness towards myself. The physical demand of actually making can shorten the time one will be able to do it full-time, if attention and respect isn’t given to one’s body.

I work with fine silver. Its softness is a crucial quality needed for the main weaving technique I developed. The one thing I LOVE about my work: no piece is exactly the same, EVER! It is the nature of the contemporary jewellery ‘woven series’: the state I’m in is reflected in the piece, which is maybe an expensive ‘mood thermometer’ for me but a wonderful incentive to search for balance!

Recently I’ve started working also on a series of drawings, something I’ve always set aside as something “to do after retiring” whatever that means… That plan always had a lovely green Irish landscape as a backdrop (I have dual citizenship: Brazilian and Irish, have grown up in Brazil but never lived in Ireland). However, after the sudden loss of a dear close friend and knowing his dreams and aspirations, several of which, just like mine, were relegated to later- it dawned on me the senselessness of that plan. So the drawings start bubbling up- driven by deep-rooted questions on cross-cultural identity, womanhood, self-sufficiency and empowerment.

I live in Cork, Ireland now.

I’m working at the moment on three areas:

- A contemporary jewellery group for an exhibition in Vilnius, Lithuania(Galerija Meno Niša) and another group for a gallery in Cork City (Designworks Studio).

- Continuing the drawing series about Human Rights which was set in motion by a call to submit artwork for an exhibition at the Picture Art Foundation, Redondo Beach, California. I was fortunate enough to have two of my drawings chosen.

- Recently I’ve resumed a collaboration with the wood artist Garvan McGrane. More of the objects series in birch multi-ply and float glass are in the making.

My father’s love of books and art and his view that being an artist was indeed a dignified activity still nurtures me with much inspiration.

Artists who “speak” mainly through metal, or in black and white are my obvious top influences, as well as the great photojournalism masters and their humanity. But my inner landscape was certainly composed by an early love of reading and by “realismo magico” literature and its richness of fantastic imagery. It is most interesting to me, in the very way it is dissimilar to surrealism, as it proposes magic not as contained in a separate, subconscious world but within ordinary life.