My name is Maria Cantone, and I am a self-taught contemporary artist. I currently reside in Miami, but I was born on an island in southern Italy, ‘Ischia’, where the colours of nature dominate everything. An incredible blue sea surrounds this beautiful fishing island in the Mediterranean, and these places inspired my passion for creating and painting.
Vision problems pushed me more and more towards art, which helped me achieve a new awareness of myself through putting the vision of my world on canvas. Travelling, often changing countries, meeting people of different nationalities has opened my mind. I’ve worked as a gardener, dishwasher, groomer, painter, bricklayer, and even as a blacksmith, and all of this is reflected in my often-crazy art.
But then who can say what madness is? I always want to experiment with new things, from sewing a new dress, to creating jewellery or waking up in the morning and deciding to make an illegal mural (but don’t tell anyone!). The world should be a large canvas where you can paint only the beautiful and leave the rest outside.
My paintings reflect my emotions, my craziness, my inner world made of lights and shadows. A part of them represents the light, the visualisation of everything beautiful that surrounds me, and another part instead represents the shadows that most characterise my being, where the soul resides, what I create, what I seek, what I am.
I use different techniques, from acrylics to sprays, I play with water and colours, I use brushes and markers and I like to pour paint onto the canvas; often I simply wait to see what happens, and without wanting to, women’s faces and bodies appear, and from there I start to give shape with my hands. The thing I love doing the most is painting with my hands, because it’s like being a child again.
