10 Questions with Paola Santagostino
Paola Santagostino reconnected with painting at the peak of a long career as a psychoanalyst, but this was a much older love, perhaps her first. As a young woman, she practised in artists' studios, but then her life took a different path, and for many years she worked as a psychotherapist specialising in psychosomatic medicine. Alongside her clinical practice, she published several books, wrote hundreds of articles, and led courses, but her love for painting continued to resurface, pushing her to delve deeper into the symbolic meaning and psychophysical effects of colours, a topic on which she published the book "Il colore in casa" (The Color at Home), Ed. Urra Feltrinelli.
Some years ago, she decided to fulfill what had always been her dream: to enroll in the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Italy. Dedicating herself full-time to painting marked the beginning of a new life cycle, where her artistic and professional passions met and merged in a daily practice that embraced both.
Indeed, Paola Santagostino's artistic language originates from her professional activity: throughout her psychoanalytic sessions, she has always needed 'paper and pencil' to trace signs that follow the sequence of her thoughts: lines, arrows, circles, occasionally a word…' to accompany the development of the conversation, visualising it almost 'geometrically' as a network of concepts.
While studying at the Brera Academy, she set out to reinterpret those working papers and draw inspiration from them to create paintings that had both pictorial value and poetry. It was a long and laborious journey that went through several phases that may seem different at first glance, but are in fact part of one same ongoing exploration.
The artist started with the most frequent sign on those papers: a series of elliptical circles that, in her visual vocabulary, symbolised "us": many different people coming together to create 'a certain situation,' or a series of thoughts that chase and overlap, creating 'a certain state of mind'. This search gave birth to the works in the "THOUGHTS" series.
Paola Santagostino - Portrait
However, while the overlapping ellipses with their stronger or lighter signs, and the color variations, succeeded in recreating a precise atmosphere, the artist wanted to give form to the entire 'discourse' that unfolds during a therapy session, with all the connections and shifts in emotional tone. This led to a second series of paintings called "DISCOURSES": a complex 'writing' executed with closed eyes and with her left hand (to activate the intuitive part of the brain). These are phrases connected to one another, painted during a kind of dance that involves the whole body: the bolder central line indicates 'the thread of the conversation,' while the increasingly thinner signs represent related concepts and topics, and the colour corresponds to the symbolism of the subject being discussed, as do the materials used.
In the subsequent series of works "PSYCHOANALYSIS SESSIONS," Paola Santagostino finally managed to give pictorial form to the 'entire mental map' of actual therapy sessions, or entire healing journeys, visualising the connections and links that structure the fascinating complexity of the inner life. Sometimes, neurons appear in the background, intertwining their dendrites, the biological basis of brain activity, while above them, symbols and thought pathways are traced: cause-effect connections, links between past and present events, derivations, consequences, and future possibilities.
The recent series "MEMORIES" represents a further expansion of the expressive possibilities of the artist's artistic language: these are large-scale works (180x180), composed of nine panels, each representing the mental map of a specific memory. They are 'windows of memory' opening onto a landscape of images and mental connections they evoke, thought pathways leading from one event to another, linking them in a web of meanings. Each panel retraces the paths of memory, giving a schematic image of the neural network they activate, while the colour symbolically represents the emotional state evoked by those memories: serene and deep memories in blues, passionate and exciting memories in reds, precious memories in golds.
www.paolasantagostinoartista.com | @Paola.Santagostino
ARTIST STATEMENT
We all think in images: the image comes before the word, the structure comes before the thought, and our unconscious mind processes visual sequences and connection patterns 'before' formulating any sentence. In her paintings, Paola Santagostino gives shape and colour to these mental maps, expressing through symbols and signs the hidden framework of our thought activity. The artist believes that these signs are not a personal whim or strictly individual mode of expression, but rather an ancient pre-verbal language, a form of visual and gestural communication used by humans since the earliest cave engravings in the Paleolithic.
MEMORIES 1.B3, acrylic on canvas, 60x60 cm, 2023 © Paola Santagostino
INTERVIEW
First of all, what sparked your interest in art, and how did you discover your passion for painting?
Since we were little, there have always been those children who draw all day, and I was one of them. As a teenager, this habit intensified even more, along with a greater understanding and exploration of different painting techniques.
You started your career as a psychoanalyst before fully dedicating yourself to painting. What led you back to art after so many years?
It happened during an exercise aimed at bringing out one's deepest desires: I discovered that I wanted to "start painting again," and a few months later, I was enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. Actually, I started my career by painting, when I was a young girl, and later I switched to psychology after a series of lung diseases. And attending the Brera Academy of Fine Arts had always been my dream from the very beginning.
MEMORIES B2, acrylic on canvas, 60x60 cm, 2023 © Paola Santagostino
How did studying at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts shape your artistic approach?
Attending the Academy was a fundamental and beautiful experience for me. At the start of each academic year, we had to present a 'project' to develop over the following months: I brought my worksheets with the mental maps from the sessions I held as a psychoanalyst. The painting professor brilliantly guided me over the years, helping me transform those scribbled sheets into real paintings.
Your work is deeply influenced by your experience in psychoanalysis. How do you translate abstract thought processes and emotions into visual form?
This is the main point of my work: I believe that translating a discourse such as "from this situation comes this, this, and this" with an arrow leading to three dots is not a personal oddity of mine, but an ancient form of gestural and visual communication: this is how the first ideographic writing systems developed. It comes completely naturally for me to visualize the chain of concepts through signs. As for emotions, it is the colour itself that evokes one emotion rather than another: it's a physiological process linked to the body's reactions.
The concept of mental maps plays a key role in your paintings. Can you explain how you developed this visual language?
How and when my visualization of mental maps began is lost in the labyrinths of memory: since I can remember, if I have to give a serious speech, I 'need' paper and pencil to trace lines and signs while I speak as if my brain needs to connect to my hand to function more clearly. I've been drawing mental maps for decades, but what has evolved since I started painting again is the technique employed to create them and the use of colour to show the emotional component of the discourse.
MEMORIES 1, acrylic on canvas, 180x180 cm, 2023 © Paola Santagostino
MEMORIES 3, acrylic on canvas, 180x180 cm, 2024 © Paola Santagostino
You often create with closed eyes and your non-dominant hand to engage intuition, as you mention in your statement. What role does the body play in your creative process?
The body plays a fundamental role in 'any' type of painting: it has recently been discovered that our mirror neurons are activated by looking at a painting, and if the work is abstract, they follow the artist's brushstrokes and thus perceive the emotions the artist experienced while painting. It is through the movements of the body that we communicate emotions and understand others' emotions, and this also applies to the movements of the painter's hand.
Colour in your works carries symbolic meaning. How do you choose the colours for each painting, and what emotions or messages do they convey?
Actually, I start with colour to paint my works, meaning that I initially feel an intense desire to use a certain colour palette, and only 'afterwards' do I develop the mental maps that correspond to it. The colours themselves communicate messages and emotions through their wavelength. Just like thought, there is an emotion at the origin, then the brain structures the reasoning, and finally, words communicate it. Personally, I tend to use colours that evoke emotions of joy, vitality, enthusiasm, or peace and serenity: these are the energies I want my paintings to emit.
MEMORIES 2, acrylic on canvas, 180x180 cm, 2024 © Paola Santagostino
Have viewers' interpretations of your work ever surprised you or made you see it in a new way?
Yes, certainly: many have seen star maps in my paintings, especially in the series where neurons intertwine their dendrites, and this made me reflect a lot on the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm. Others have seen maps of cities from above in my paintings, and in fact, they are pathways, even if mental; after all, we build cities in the image of our brain structures. And perhaps, just a hypothesis, even the ancient Paleolithic engravings, which we have interpreted as maps of the territory, might have represented the symbolic paths of a ritual or a mythological narrative.
What are you currently working on, and are there any new directions you're excited to explore in your art?
Yes, at the moment, I am finishing the paintings in the "MEMORIES" series, with some new works. But right after, I would like to create even larger paintings, monochromatic and made with different materials in relief, so that the 'map' and the 'pathway' stand out in an even more substantial form.
And finally, where do you see yourself and your work in five years from now?
Can we joke a little? How about MoMA?
Artist’s Talk
Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.
