Interview: Chisara Vidale
Luca Curci talks with Chisara Vidale during the second edition of BARCELONA CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR 2021, at Valid World Hall Gallery.

Chisara Vidale is an emerging artist, who lives and works in London. Chisara explores many cultures and faiths, drawing on our shared experience of reality and also her own connection to the natural world to create work.  Abstracted leaves, fungi, and flowers are often present in her paintings and she feels an acute connection to nature, its geometry and the cycle of the seasons. Using primarily water-based mediums and colour pencil, Chisara couples intricacy with a powerful use of colour, to create dynamic pieces.  Within her current work, she has been researching moments of creation, transformation and growth:  looking for the instances where order and chaos merge.  She is particularly interested in the movement of energy through lifeforms, and our interaction with this force.

Luca Curci – Which subject are you working on?
Chisara Vidale – My current work is about celebrating and visualising the life force that is present and pulsating through all living beings. I am developing my connection to and understanding of this energy. With this exploration, I am also researching faith practice and other connections that we as humans have to the divine and greater existence. This work is about how and where we access the ethereal and eternal aspects of living and being human.

LC – How did you get to your current artistic practice?
CV – I have been raised interacting with the natural world, from growing food on an allotment to growing flowers and fruit. Once you have this connection to nature, I don’t think it can ever really leave you. I deeply cherish the rhythms of the changing seasons and the new plants and colours that this brings. My practice grew out of this interaction: I just wanted to paint the flowers and celebrate them. Over time as my work developed, it became more abstract, I began to want to show not only a plant but its essence, the feelings that these interactions create, the spirituality of these moments. It was at this point that I began to bring faith and spirituality to my work more, and research these Ideas further. I think in essence my work has become about the spirituality of the natural world.

LC – Which art themes do you pursue? What is your preferred subject, if there is any?
CV – It is a given, my art would not exist without nature, but I do also spend a lot of time looking at faith practices, reading mythological stories and tales. Working whilst exploring these different avenues helps me to understand, visualise and interpret the spirit within nature. I think that I will always in some way be looking at the intersection between or one aspect of, the natural, the anthropological and the metaphysical.

LC – What is your creative process like? 
CV – My work begins outdoors, growing plants, going to see them in the wild, walking in the forests or parks. I spend a lot of time photographing, sketching from and observing the landscape around me and further away. I have to take time to tap into the ‘hum’ or feeling of life and the living beings. What usually happens is that I will see something on a walk, perhaps a certain plant or view that just clicks, it translates into a line drawing in my mind, and a movement of colours that I feel I have to draw almost instantly or it will be lost. This is the best place for me to work from, the most joyful and honest, when I don’t feel that, I spend time sketching, researching and experimenting with different materials so that I don’t frustrate myself looking for a moment that hasn’t happened yet.

LC – Did your style change over the years? In which way?
CV – My earlier work was much more literal, I would paint from a photograph of a plant that I had taken. Gradually as I developed an interest in the geometry of nature, I became less focussed on painting plants and more on geometry and expressing ideas through geometry. Over the last year, I have come to a point of combining this exploration with my love of painting plants, which has created something new altogether.

LC – In which way the artwork presented in our exhibition is connected with the festival’s theme?
CV – ‘Crocus’ was created in response to walking through a spring garden, seeing bursts of flower buds that were shooting through the earth. ‘Crocus’ is about softening the boundary between a plant and a person, and acknowledging the flow of consciousness between organisms. The painting is also a depiction of the infinite and abstract connection we have with the outer world, the spirituality and wonder present within the act of observation.

LC – What do you think about the concept of this festival? How did it inspire you?
CV – I instantly connected with the concepts of both ‘mixing identities’ and ‘future landscapes’ because my practice is about exploring the unseen and the complexity of the experience of just being.

LC – What do you think about the organization of our event?
CV – Due to Covid restrictions, I could not attend the event, which was disappointing. However, a friend did get to see the show and sent a video of the lovely venue and the artwork, which was really nice to see. Overall the team was very helpful and responded to emails quickly which was appreciated.

LC – What are your suggestions about our services? Is there something more we can provide to artists?
CV – I was sent an email just before the end of the show with details of someone to organise the return of the work with. I was a bit confused as the original contract said to organise your own collection. Luckily a friend was able to collect the work for me, but perhaps more info on how work is returned would be helpful for artists organising collections.

LC – What is your idea about ITSLIQUID GROUP?
CV – I felt that ITSLIQUID were easy to work with and I liked the themes and explorations of the artworks that they were showing.