ART

When I was a teenager in Rome in the 1960s, I would watch my mother at work in front of her easel. I began using her oil paints and canvases, and soon found myself preferring the palette knife to the brush.

I love textured painting because through the thickness of the colour, and depending on how it is applied, it becomes possible to convey the exact texture of whatever one wishes to represent.

When I first began painting, I did not know that my grandfather, Frederick Tyrone Power, painted whenever he was not performing in the theatre. The size of his large canvases is reminiscent of many of mine.

My aunt Anne, my father’s sister, was a professional painter, so perhaps the artistic vein does run in the blood. Unlike my aunt, however, I am self-taught. At school I used to argue with the art teacher because I never wanted to do things the way he instructed. I always did them my own way. And that is still true today. I have never stopped painting.

Over the years, painting has become a way for me to express my feelings without having to use words. Colours become sensations, and bold palette-knife strokes become a direct personal release, with nothing in between.

That, too, is why I love painting: it is just you, the palette knife, the canvas and your dreams.