I am 62 years old and I live in Calabria, in the ancient Magna Graecia. I am harsh and solitary, wild, introverted, anarchic and autistically proud like my land, which is full of stormy seas, turquoise and crystalline seas, and rugged and desolate mountains, very colorful and rich in lakes and impenetrable woods. I have been painting, drawing, photographing, cutting, sewing, gluing professionally since 1995, since I decided that I wanted to breathe art every moment of my life.
I like to experiment with everything I have at hand,mixing incompatible, different materials in absurd ways. I like to scratch and dirty my photos. Sew them together and with my paintings. I like to sew my paintings endlessly.
I never know what I’ll do, what of new or old I’m going to create. I don’t like to plan anything, I want things to happen as and when they have to happen, I don’t do anything at all…. I put on some music, maybe with a good glass of red wine…. I sit at my work table where I have all my colors, my beloved books, my photos, my colors….and the magic happens every time.
After a while I start to draw dots, lines, knotted lines, I choose the colors….and so on….it’s wonderful what happens every time. It’s a continuous catharsis, a going inside myself, and always opening new doors to go deeper and deeper.
To know, to discover and open parts of me that were sealed and that now by magic I was able to open and penetrate. Art has been my autistic way to be in the world, the only way I know and have to communicate my words, what I have in my mind and heart. It is the dance that I have chosen to dance in harmony with my breathing.
It is my freedom, the freedom that is essential for me to live, to feel sincere and true. For the first 14 years of my ”professional” career I drew and painted only in black and white with rivers of ink and lots and lots of paper. I love black indian ink, and its thousand shades…..they are like the thousand shades of my soul, they are like the clouds that hide the faint glow of the moon….like the thousand thoughts that crowd the mind before it can choose the right word.
I started drawing frantically and joyfully on many many zines and magazines from all over the world, I collaborated with noise, metal, industrial, techno music bands….did a lot of mail art…drew for everyone, everything. I have never stopped since then, obviously because I like it, because it is the job I have chosen, it is my life, the life I have chosen to live freely. I never stop looking for freedom in everything I do, it is essential to me. Art is freedom, dance, joy, pain, art is life.
The transition to color was an obvious, natural necessity, and collage too. Collage is an extraordinary bridge to and with infinite potential, it is a labyrinth, a puzzle that never ceases to amaze me. I love experimenting, measuring myself and having fun with everything that attracts my attention, it helps me grow artistically, to discover many new games.
My inspirations are many, many….. my beloved books, underground comics, fashion magazines, so much contemporary art, medieval and Renaissance art….Osho , Aurobindo and Mère, Sara Vaughan, Patty Waters, Evan Parker and Ornette Coleman, Can, Nicke Drake and Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell…. Diamanda Galas and Joel Peter Witkink…. many, much more… the laughter of my friends, the noises of the street, my beloved cats, the winter sea and mountain lakes.
…and of course the tarot cards….I have been studying, reading and painting tarot cards since I was a boy….I love them and I can’t stop studying them, contemplating them, collecting them. For the International Tarot Museum I have created 5 tarot decks and in these days I will start the sixth.
I hope and want to continue to create and be free as I am today
Mitchell Pluto 