The first evening: three canvases that have just been bought and taken out of the cellophane wrapping. I am looking at them and thinking of what to put on them and at the same time my gaze skims over the "silicone" cartridges that are in my room because I have to put some fi nishing touches to the custom-made furnishings that I have just assembled… In such cases the silicone is needed to conceal the tiny gaps that can remain when making special adaptations during assembly! It all happened in a flash; I took a cartridge and started tracing out lines without even bothering to fi rst outline them with a pencil! I simply started and that was it!

Silicone is soft, resistant and tepid to the touch: it’s a pleasant sensation that enhances the visual effect. The canvas subtly acquires a threedimensional aspect where the lines of silicone create plays of light and shade and just cry out to be touched, almost as if they were a code that has nothing to do with sight! I just knew that such a corporeal sensation of the stroke would have drawn everyone to it like a magnet.

Silicone is an extremely strong and resilient material so that even if it is touched a thousand times, just like the human body, it does not get ruined. Likewise every stroke or caress is pleasurable, alluring and almost startling. I started with black silicone, but then painstakingly set out to fi nd other types of silicone and found them in various colours so that even within a single mark I now also manage to create shadings.

Working with oil, acrylic and silicone is exciting. The creative act is like desire, when sensations thunderously explode within me and I become so engrossed that I forget all usual perception of time and space. Pain, which is practically a constant companion, remains in abeyance in these moments, as if in hazardous apnoea which sends signals that I immediately convert into colours, fields and boundaries of silicone.

I have always loved "carbon". Lightweight, strong, flexible and particularly beautiful: these are all features of carbon that fascinate me. I let amazement wash over me every time I look at its refl ections, its interweaving grid pattern, its perfect conformation! And even though I have seen it millions of times, have touched it and always have a piece of it to hand (I went around with carbon fi bre in the boot of my car for two years, just to have it with me and look at it every now and then) and use it even on the pictures I am doing now, this enchantment never ends.