31 house in Parioli in Rome, with my friend Daniela, who was her son Gianpaolo's babysitter. I remember her as a unique, beautiful woman: at the time, she was engaged to Alex, the Afghan prince son of the former king in exile in Italy. I also remember the cultural liveliness of the house, which was frequented by many artists and critics. Luigi Ontani, who was a close friend of Anna Maria, gave us the Indian diary that my friend and I took with us on our first trip to the United States. I still have it. I wrote notes in it, drew, painted. What I remember about Anna Maria Colucci is her great openness, her availability and her great passion for the Orient. When there was a problem, everything was solved with “let's ask the Ching!”. When she became Samagra a few years later, she spoke to me of colour as an instinctive and direct experience, unlike her photographic works of the late 1960s and 1970s, which were much more conceptual and reflected her adherence to feminism, having participated in the birth of the Cooperativa del Beato Angelico, one of the first feminist collectives in Italy. Are there any artists you consider mentors? The first is my mother who, when she was at boarding school at a young age, made three paintings that she brought home. They were simple oils on wood. It's a shame she didn't continue to paint, but she certainly must have planted the first seed in me. With regard to the use of colour, a mentor was probably Mario Schifano with that movement inherent in the colours, that frenzy that reflects his personality and in which, in part, I find myself. I also had a short acquaintance with Schifano, because his wife Monica De Bei and their son Marco lived for a while in the same building as me in Rome and he used to visit them. When my eldest son Marco was born, he also gave me one of his works. However, depending on how I relate to a given project, the inspirations and mentors can be different. For the Iosepha series, I was inspired by Klimt and his use of gold in painting, while the nervous stroke stems from my admiration for Schiele. Among my contemporaries, an artist I hold in high esteem, although I don't think I have ever been directly inspired by his works, apart from, perhaps, at the beginning for the use of plexiglas, is Emilio Leofreddi. Finally, I must thank Baldo Diodato for helping me to get to know and approach resin. But the real mentor, to whom I owe so much, is inside me: that insistent and demanding voice that kept telling me to never give up, always pushing me to look for new solutions. Rome, 29 November 2021
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