Passeri di Seta

In the Passeri di Seta wallpaper I wanted to hold the moment when two songbirds settle on a flowering, knotted branch that enters at the lower left and climbs diagonally to the upper right: one turns its head towards a cluster of buds and open flowers, the other looks down towards a moth and a dragonfly suspended among serrated leaves set in alternating pairs along the wood. The branch divides only once, letting a finer stem fall towards the lower right, with a few flowers, to balance the mass above. I painted following the discipline of Gongbi, the meticulous old Chinese painting: first the outline, in an even thread of ink, then mineral colour laid in flat and patient layers, feather after feather, petal after petal, never with a broad gesture.

The ground remains unpainted silk, aged in tone, so that ivory, pale pink, malachite and celadon, ochre and coral stay precise accents and not clamour. It is an asymmetrical composition, a single focus in the upper left, that lets the corners breathe: the quiet of a gaze that settles rather than hurries. In this I come back to believing that painting is attention — to the branch, the feather, the transparent wing of the insect — before it is image. It is this attention that WallZad brings to the weave of the Passeri di Seta wallpaper, reproduced as a museum photograph of the original painting, brushwork and surface intact, ready to fill an entire wall and to give back, every day, the same patience with which it was made.