Antonio Di Michele

Antonio Di Michele paints in Bussana Vecchia, the artists' village above Sanremo. An earthquake emptied it in the late nineteenth century. Artists from around the world later settled there, and the place remains a hub for painters and sculptors. Born in Castilenti, in the province of Teramo, in 1953, Di Michele has made Liguria his working ground. The region gives his paintings their subject: sea, sky and rugged terrain.

He works as an impressionist, laying colour down in broad, textured strokes with a palette knife. Experience as a restorer in the workshop of master G. Leonardi shaped that approach. His work has travelled through group exhibitions and competitions in cities across Italy. The honours include the Leone d'Oro at the Casino di Sanremo, the International European Prize and the International Trophy at Limone Piemonte. He is a founding member of the Pinacoteca Museum there, and some of his paintings hang on its walls. Beyond that museum, his canvases sit in galleries and private collections across Italy and abroad. Critics such as Gaggino, Fumagalli, Walter and Argoult have written about his work in national and international journals, magazines and catalogues.

Campo di Girasoli, Field of Sunflowers, dates from 2002: oil on canvas, 160 by 80 centimetres, worked with a palette knife. Sunflowers mass in the foreground while the view pulls your eye into the distance. Flowers became an independent subject in still life painting in the early seventeenth century, and sunflowers carry that tradition forward. His style stays fundamentally figurative, yet the brushwork reaches for every nuance of light and keeps its freshness in execution.