There’s one dimension that I have always thought of as fundamental, which is visiting artists in their studios. Whenever I have travelled, the first thing I have done is organise at least one appointment with an artist to visit their world. The way that I prefer is a tete-à-tete meeting, so that the two of us can converse. This is how I feel we can understand something about each other and find points of contact.
I was still at high school when my ‘teacher’ Carmengloria Morales sent me a list of artists of her generation in Milan to meet in their microcosm. The first one to reply to me was Bruno Di Bello when I was sixteen. 
Seeing how artists establish a process with their works, watching how they construct their spaces, seeing what surrounds them, what books they read, what music they listen to, how they organise their day, listening to them reflect on what they do in their own words was a real education for me.
Subsequently, as soon as I started to have my first studio space in New York at the age of eighteen, and I started to perceive it as ‘my’ shell, filling it with of all the things I am made of, I made sure to invite all the other artists I met to visit it. 
Ever since then, even when the studio came to overlap with my work, I have always tried to reconstruct ‘a room all of my own’. I do this not only to continue to work as a painter, but also to feel at home in my mental space. Even when it was only a temporary place, I was always prepared to welcome in anyone who interested me and who wanted to have a relationship with me. I have always preferred this type of situation to reach out to people, because it is here that I have always felt authentic, it is here that I have always had the sensation of being able to explain myself and make myself known.
(I don’t know why, but for about thirty years I have kept a list, in alphabetical order, of all the people who have been to visit me in my ‘definitive place’ in Venice.)

(Written in 2024)