xmas

i made this drawing as a present for my roomate. it's all pink! bad pic, bad cropping, bad angle

alligator tat

here is the crocodile tattoo i did this morning on my dear Marco. He showed up at my house at 4am after his show, asked me to feed him pasta, then passed out in a split second while i was completely awake, and finally woke up at 9am to get tattooed before departure.
He wanted a silly crocodile tattoo with sunglasses, as a tribute to the tour he just finished with Crocodiles around USA, Europe and Mexico. Originally he wanted the alligator to be wearing a sombrero and have a slice of pizza but eventually we only kept the sunglasses. I drew a bunch of flash for him but he kept saying he wanted something more stupid! I ended up stealing a crocodile from the simpson. I think it came out cute!

hey you the rock steady crew

today i tattooed this on my sweet roommate/best friend Fede; we decided the subject last night and i sketched it out . then i woke her up, fed her soy yogurt with cereals and made her lay on the kitchen table for 3 hours. awesome. everyone says it feels b-boy style heheh- this is the best tattoo i've done so far, im very excited. more coming, yo!

more tattoos

script + psychomystical solid geometry

NY Press -cover-

they used this old illustration i had on my website, for this week's NY Press cover.
this was originally an illustration for the month of december, and that explains the christmas tattoos + star on shirt + candy cane vein shot.
i think it's for an article about heroin but i have no idea what it says about it.

all i see is tattooed

YANTRA RULES!!!
grazie, leo

OH: and please, notice the physical condition he showed up to get tattooed. stabbed and bruised all over. i love my friends, they are all weird.

As Klimt beheaded

Here is a new small painting, it was done for a show in Philly (this december..i'll keep you posted). The theme for such show is La Petite Mort, the Small Death, the french metaphor for Orgasm. The ideas of love and death have always been associated and the all thing charmes me. I keep saying that I don't want to paint bloody, straight forward, cruent pictures anymore but I seem not to be able to, yet. I need to get over it though, I want to be more subtle, delicate and pretty. I am too simple minded I guess. I will switch to flowers soon.
I am not sure what to write, since this picture really appears easy on a reading level. There is the beautiful beheading, often used as a device to represent the abandonement of rationality and the embrace of instincs (think of how Klimt "beheaded" his women through golden elaborate necklaces; the art purpose needs no justification because there is no reason for it to exist but pleasure); a bed of teeth, as they recurr in psychology as an oniric symbol for the same concept. In italian we also say "via il dente via il dolore" (remove the tooth, remove the pain) and I thought it conformed to the idea of painful pleasure. The woman holds a book, meaning that all this speech about leaving rational interpretation apart fails anyway, because it is the very product of an intellectual formula anyways. The book represents a mantid (known for beheading her partner after copulation), a scapegoat (a hint of anti-religion, because anything concening sex calls for it), and some random nonsense, because all this words and pictures at the end go back to mean nothing.
Her tattoo says Post-Romantica, it's self explanatory.
Acrylic on wood, thats it.

ART SHOW!!!!!! you go!!!!!

tattz

some more tattoo pics (terrible pics, to be accurate). i inked these a while ago but i have no photos of the newer ones. the lighthouse looks MUCH better in real life than in this shaky pic. the storming brains photo is awful, i beg your forgiveness.
the tattoo flash is about post-modernism. idols have fallen, values have been reversed, the reference is gone, time for a DIY attitude.
hire me to damage you forever.

tattoo pics -in the making-

tattoo #4
tattoo #5
photos from the tattoo session. i tattooed a lovely Never Again on my friend fede. she is beautiful. we did this small cursive lettering on her hips, she was chilled the all time and said i have a nice hand : )
i'll have to go back on the grey under-shadows..i was bit shy because i was not entirely sure how to mix black with water...other than that, i think it came out nice. it has good meaning too for her so i hope it will work out!
the next one was on her friend Davide who came all the way from Torino to get tattooed by me without knowing him..how cute! he was very brave too and asked me one of the flash i drew...an evil light bulb (you know, like hairy and stuff..) with the words Mala Idea...ON HIS CHEST!!! whoa
he sat down quiet and occasionally stared at my boobs while i tattooed him. he said he liked it too ; )
it was kind of a hard one because i didn't really know how to shade the inside of the bulb but i guess i'll just go back to it later and finish it up.
more coming soon

when dreams come true

so, yeah i started tattooing! i love it. the very first tattoo i made (in 10 years...i actually tattooed 2 friends 11 years ago but i guess it doesn't count) is the butterfly on my thigh. it needs to be colored..in a couple of weeks. i used 2 different needles. i took it straight it from a photo of a butterfly and transfered it on my skin so there is that natural irregularity on one wing that needs to be fixed as well, making it simmetrical. I actually drew a much better butterfly later that night so i'll get that tattooed underneath soon. i guess i was a bit impulsive and neurotic about grab the first piece of body and practice.
then i tattooed the severed tentacle on my friend. the pic is bad, i'll post better soon.
the next day i tattooed Piu' bici on my left foot. yoga helped me out a lot on this one. i was in a weird uncomfortable pose with no choices of angles for me to work from. I love yoga.
the tattoo means "more bikes" in italian. i will tattoo "meno cravatte" on the other foot next time. It means "less ties". i also have a cute drawing of a shirt collar to put above. adorable.
then there is a photo of me at the end of the first day.
tattooing is fun. im looking for people to experiment on, do you wanna play? write me.

more on the skin surface

another flash sheet, im starting tattooing my own legs this weekend and wanted to go for something black&grey to start easy.
i'll do some of these designs.
bikes, yoga, activists, misfortune tellers and love stories told by dead men.

COX 18!!

a poster i did for a benefit show at cox18. cox18 is an historical squat in the navigli area, milan. it always hosted amazing punk, rock'n'roll, funk and jazz shows, movie nights, art and comics happenings, lectures and shit, together with a splendid library on political issues, donated by primo moroni at his trespass. intellectuals such philp dick and hakim bey had events there.
this winter the police shut it down in one day, everyone in milan gathered and started a strong protest that went on in the streets until the squatters...took it back!
the major had plans to make that area a fancy clean boring area for people to spend money in useless shit but apparently it didn't work out. RESIST!
my friends veracrash and fuckvegas are playing, will be fun. the skeleton in the picture is our beloved mayor, miss letizia moratti shitface. she has orange hair, for real.

"The dirts gonna be your dessert
My cum be your life source
And the only way to get it
Is to suck or fuck
Or be poor and devoid
And masturbate me, masturbate me
YOU'VE GOT TO SUCK, LETIZA SUCK"

my art show

a bad case of feminine mystique.

here is a new painting. I understand, it's weird and different from what i usually make. but hey, what can i do?
the very first intent was to remember and recycle some of amelia's (RIP) attitude and ideas. in our first year of college she started this huge collage of porno images and then painted over it. there was some concept about feminism about the porno thing, and i though she was a genius. then she kept overpainting it and got angry and abandoned it. and i though she was funny.
i always liked that porno collage idea and wanted to replicate it. i figured out what i wanted to paint over, before i started it, so i wouldn't get angry and abandon it as well.
Im not sure I really want to talk about what's going on, because the main thing was the amelia's tribute.
i'll just say what's in there and you decide what it means.
There is a young lady nervously stretching her shirt. she has her period and I know exactly why she does so, but i won't tell you.
she is holding an evil iron, because sometimes it happens and it's hard to deal with it.
there is a burning suburban house.
there are chemtrails in the sky. I know my friend L. will complain or at least make some sort of philosophical or socio-political observation here, but he won't get me in trouble. honestly, the matter is simple. whether chemtrails are a legitimate concern or not, whether it's poison to make us bleed or herbal essences to please our senses, these trails of clouds are up in the sky now and if they are there, they can also be in my painting, because it's the only place where I can decide if I want chemtrails or not. apparently, i do.
there are porno girls sucking and licking and taking a range of bright pink cocks.
there are some dracula stamps.
maybe i'll write more about this when i figure out what the fuck i was thinking, other than Amelia.

VERACRASH

ok this is funny. but only if you are italian. you can otherwise still enjoy the pink dildos. it's a random graphic for friends band, veracrash. their debut album is comin out soon and it's titled 11:11. ok so, here is the fun: the italian translation for -failure- is -fallimento- if you cut the word in 2 you have two other words (it's not meant to be that way though...it's not a composed word such as runaway). the two words you obtain are -falli- which means phalluses, and -mento- which means chin.
so i drew 4 phalluses and one chin and we noticed the phalluses also looked like 11 11, so i added the dots and now we have a double word game. i love enigmatic. go listen to veracrash now.

the city of coffins

here is a new painting. like, a real one, with lots of paint everywhere especially on my face, wood panels, new brushes etc.
it was done atomic-speed, no more than one week and it's BIG. i am proud of this so let me make myself Pretty on that.
Let's see...the first idea came while i was reading a book, the tattoo artist by Jill Ciment, and the main character draws a portrait of new york made out of coffins in the place of buildings. i though it was a very smart idea and i though someone should make that drawing for real. i eventually decided that someone was me. so drew a skyline of coffins. then i really wanted some pink ocean because i think it's awesome. and clouds because really, it often storms. not in NY, just in general. and there are a lot of chemtrails too but that's for another painting.
that put me in the unfortunate position of coming to terms with myself on how to incorporate backgrounds in the making of a picture. you can easily notice, there is NEVER a background in my pieces. always blank flat tone, maybe some wallpaper if i feel creative. truth being, i don't know where to start with backgrounds because i have no perspective skills or vague idea on how to paint a tree without drawing every single leaf. but this time i tried, it's still very simple but the real character here is the setting and i've never done anything like that before. the focus was always on the action or the character or both.
i think it came out nice as a first attempt.
i also always wanted to make a painting based on Le Citta' Invisibili (the invisible cities) by calvino. i wrote down on my notebook "Despina", which is one of the cities, while i was reading it. I was in costa rica at the time and i don't even remember which one Despina is, but i think it was a city of memories and i apparenlty liked it and wanted to retain some of it when i wrote it down, so i trusted myself and didn't go read what the city looks like. but i will. being a city of memories (i hope) it marries with the all Tattoo theme from the other book. i wanted some graphic elements and i love letters so i just wrote the name of Despina in type breezing away from the coffins. I also wrote L'Absurde L'amour but I don't remember why. It still triggers good means.
The skeleton is a self-portrait, it has my tattoos and is reading The Tattoo Artist. It's the last skeleton i paint, i promise. In the book there was also the idea of getting your own coffin tattooed etc. so i thought i would put myself in my own coffin in my own painting.
I had a lot of fun drawing and painting coffins. I love doing the wood texture and you get to experiment a lot and always have to figure out different ways to get to the same effect without being boring and repetitive. I found myself with my head facing the floor from close distance at yoga and i REALLY observed the wood texture and got ideas on how to paint the last two since i had no more ideas for it. I always had a problem with the color brown, i can't ever make it work or at least i have to struggle with it a lot. it is not an opaque color but not even vibrant so it drives me inZZZZane when i try to understand it. i mixed brown with a bunch of other colors, to make all the coffins different. some with pink, baby blue, rotted green etc.
finally, in the right bottom corner, i wrote the title in a black outlined square and stamped a weird bunny head with a stamp i got in london. i am currently into japanese prints and love those graphic solutions.

i will put it in a show at limited no art gallery in milan, opening may 5th. come and check it out in person. or not.

another painting coming soon. a tribute to amelia (RIP), you'll see. there is a lot of fun going on.
love

the last one

last sheet of tattoo flash that i do for now. time for a big painting on wood, it will realize as my time vacuum-cleaner. there will be a lot of coffins in it.

tattoo machine makes me wanna cry

more tattoo flash and nothing to say about it. except, i wanna start tattooing, please, someone teach me.

get inked!

one more sheet of tattoo designs

we are young and good looking, happy rock'roll family

Finally something new. I've been drawing a lot of tattoo flashes, given the fact that i would LOOOOOOOVE to start learning that form of art. here is my first sheet, they are all about mind control + general collapse and they are funny because there is a bunch of written messages to be only one sheet. they probably are even controversial.
doing tattoo flashes i noticed that you can apply at least two methods. one, being very realistic about how the real tattoo would be and don't add any colors or linework that would not fit on the skin. two, be a little more free and if you'll get to do the actual tattoo, you'll figure it out at the moment, changing what doesn't look right.
I've been experiencing both the perspectives, i'll post some more later.
Other than, that, been riding my beautiful new bike, ursula, breaking bones and body parts at yoga (in a good way though), serving vegan foods in a vegan food place.
A new painting is on its way. so far, only between my eyes on the inside, but soon it will take accessible way to the out world.
love