Wabi Sabi in Painting
Wabi Sabi Live Painting at the Conservatory of Milan
COLOR LISTENS
Abstract and informal Wabi Sabi painting — surfaces as sensory fields
Sound cannot be seen.
It is born, it moves through the body, it disappears.
It leaves something behind — an echo, a density, a trace of light.
In March, I will be on stage at the Conservatory of Milan, brush in hand, while the music unfolds.
I paint in real time, listening to what cannot be held, and try to give it form.
I do not illustrate the music: I inhabit it.
Color is my instrument of listening.
Pigment — mineral powder, earth, raw matter — becomes the bridge between sound and surface.
Each stroke is an unrepeatable gesture, like a note.
Making the invisible visible is the concept of this series of performances: a cycle of 80 cm×80 cm works born from the dialogue between two languages, sound and matter.
Color comes before form.
Pigment. Matter. Listening.
My painting is born where ceramics and sound meet:
in the present gesture, in color as the skin of the world.
Before it becomes an image, color is dust.
Mineral, earth, pure pigment — matter that has not yet found its direction.
It is in this space, before the gesture, that my work begins.
The same attention I bring to wabi sabi ceramics — to the imperfect vibration of the surface, to the weight of clay in my hands — I bring to color: how it layers, how it breathes, how it retains the memory of the gesture.
It is the language of the soul.
Abstract and informal painting, born from listening. A physical and sensory relationship with matter. Not a smooth, controlled surface, but living skin.
My research into wabi sabi painting begins here: from listening to what cannot be held, from the desire to give shape to what exists only for a moment.
Wabi Sabi Painting: color as a present gesture
Wabi sabi is not a decorative style.
It is a way of seeing. A way of being.
In wabi sabi painting, color does not seek perfection or absolute control. It welcomes the unexpected. It honors imperfection as a living space, not as an error to be corrected.
Color listens. Before becoming image, it is substance; before becoming form, it is presence.
Each stroke is an unrepeatable gesture, like a musical note.
Each layer retains the memory of a movement, a breath, a time that will not return.
In this sense, wabi sabi painting does not construct a definitive image: it reveals a process.
Abstract and Informal Painting as a Sensory Field
The works are created in 80 cm×80 cm format, as fields of listening.
Surfaces that do not tell a story, but hold an experience — an emotion.
Abstract and informal painting allows me to work before recognizable form, before concept. Color precedes drawing. Matter precedes idea.
This is where my painting practice dialogues with wabi sabi ceramics.
In ceramics, the surface carries traces of fire, pressure, time — in painting, the surface carries traces of sound, gesture, layering.
In both cases, beauty does not impose itself: it reveals itself.
Making the Invisible Visible
Making the invisible visible is the concept of this series of performances.
When I paint live, time is not neutral. It is material.
Music unfolds in space and in the body. Color responds.
There is no draft, no repetition.
There is listening.
Wabi sabi painting is born precisely in this space of presence: at the moment when control gives way to intuition, when the gesture is not planned but necessary.
The final painting is not the result of a closed project. It is the sedimentation of an experience.
A Present That Does Not Repeat
Each canvas is born from a moment of listening: a sound, a light, an emotion that has not yet words.
Color does not describe — it transforms.
Matter takes shape where control gives way to presence.
Each work created during the performances at the Conservatory will be unique. A present that does not repeat.
The works will be available at the Fondazione Società dei Concerti del Conservatorio.
Wabi Sabi in Painting: An Ongoing Exploration
My research into wabi sabi painting is not separate from other practices. The earth of ceramics, the pigment of painting, the light of photography are not distinct fields: they are three ways of listening to the same thing.
Essential forms.
Surfaces that carry the memory of gesture.
A beauty that does not seek to impose itself, but emerges.
Making the invisible visible means giving space to what exists before form, before word, before image.
It is there that my work begins.
1 Performed during Anna Tifu Tango Quartet | “Tango” 20:00 PMMarch 11, 2026 — Sala Verdi, Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi, Milan
2 Performed during Vsevolod Zavidov, piano | “Tutto Liszt” — 5:00 PM April 22, 2026 — Sala Verdi, Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi, Milan
3 Performed during Gala di Presentazione Stagione 26/27 | Ivanna Speranza, soprano & Ramin Bahrami, piano — 5:30 PM May 16, 2026 — Sala Verdi, Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi, Milan
🎟 Concert info: soconcerti.it/appuntamenti
ph credits Stefania Giorgi
