Reviews of the works
To Silvia Patamia
SEA WITHIN
and the scenography of the unconscious
Graceful and original, Silvia Patamia excels in mastering techniques and colors to perfection. In her latest exhibition, where I admired and reviewed her work, she traversed, in just three pieces, a spectrum of styles. One example is the soft, delicate, and refined watercolor “Suspended between Earth and Heaven” , where a whimsical flying dragon, imbued with sweet peculiarity, soars through an oriental sky adorned with red lanterns. It flies over and stands out against a charming, rippling sea, where the waves—gentle little crests—form a vast and loving cradle for a divine yet slightly domestic geisha. She appears truly devoted, as if in repose, in union, in an embrace with the Infinite. For some time now, the delicacy of her stroke and the dreamlike chromatic imagination have radiated like the fantastical and visionary scenography… of the unconscious. Roman by origin (she has now returned to the capital), Silvia’s love for art began in childhood. As she grew, she pursued studies that matched her inclinations and immersed herself in her passion. She attended Art High School and studied Art History at university. For at least a decade, she lived in southern Italy, dedicating herself to various projects and works as an interior designer—a role somewhat akin to what we call an Interior Architect. It was in this affectionate and cheerful magical South that she fell in love with the sea—a sea she now carries within her, as if fulfilling a secret and lyrical enchantment, both chromatic and emotional. How beautiful and familiar is the small, round acrylic-painted table (78 cm in diameter) named “Dreaming Australia” . Let us say it outright: Dreaming Australia is not at all like singing the danceable Dreaming California. With tones ranging from oceanic blues to stirred greys, to an aquatic bloom of red, lilac, and violet jellyfish, it surprises at every mysterious glance, every vast or intimate visual and expressive landing. This intertwining of eyes, eddies, and gazes in swirling motion crowns, in a circular and curvilinear way, a wrapped, inexhaustible, and fervent imagination. "Fervent" means accelerated enthusiasm, theorized and made explicit. This is what happens with the third piece Silvia Patamia presents to us. Entirely open and dispersed, like an ineffable submarine horizon, it reminds us of the motto—and the scientific certainty—that everything originates from water, from the primordial and ancestral fluid (especially and fundamentally from the maternal, universal Sea Within). It prompts us to humorously recite and intone the most beautiful incipit of our secular Genesis: "Where everything started" Indeed, everything truly began in this splendid submerged horizon, somber yet brimming with colors, flowers, and reborn aquatic creatures. A Sea Within where we now glimpse the moon, strange resonant aquatic poppies, and where a fish flies, or a bird swims and dives—it is all the same. Well done, Silvia—brava for these soft, tender hues. The seabed dampens and rounds off stones and hostile rocks, transforming them into a joyful and playful panorama of childlike balloons. All of it is woven, stitched, embroidered, and crowned in shades of pink, azure, and luminous iridescent greens. Yes, the sky and seabed hover in darkness, but, like in the darkroom of ancestral memory, she prepares and already begins to develop the most poignant, airy, and joyous colors. These are the hues that bring into focus and reciprocate the eyes of Love.
Plinio Perilli
The drawings are of great finesse and are enhanced by well-chosen colors. The whole demonstrates great sensitivity and undeniable talent.
Bernard Besanatechnical drawing teacher and trainer in stone arts professions at Greta del'Aube and CFA Haute-Marne
The works of Silvia Patamia are imbued with the eternal struggle between refined feminine sensitivity and the raw, dramatic reality. There is light, elegance, and dreams intertwined with dragons, skulls, and chains.
Silvia's creations softly scream their desperate love for life.