Renata Soro was born in Alghero, Sardinia, but developed her artistic training in Liguria, where she lives and works. She has held several solo exhibitions—notably Rispecchiamenti (2009) at the Galleria Roberto Rotta Farinelli in Genoa—and group exhibitions, including the recent Il segreto di eva/eva's secret (2016). Her works have been exhibited at the Biennale Le latitudini dell’arte (2015) and the 54th Venice Biennale International Exhibition for the Liguria Pavilion (2011).
In our daily lives, we are surrounded by images and sounds. We constantly interact with multiple screens, our attention spans shrink, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to pause and truly look. Why do you choose to work with painting (against the grain of technological evolution), which—both in its creation and its appreciation—requires time, concentration, and long pauses?
I could tell you that painting is a vocation, a craft, a deep necessity. It’s true, today we no longer have time to stop and read an image, overloaded as we are with visual stimuli of every kind. The birth of a painting requires an infinitely long execution time, especially when using oil techniques. I don’t know if there’s still a place for painting, but I can tell you that the slow process of creating a painting aligns with my breathing: while working with brushes and colors, I come into contact with my true self. I simply stop in front of a canvas, and in doing so, I also suspend the rhythm of life around me; I rediscover a spiritual, inner dimension where it’s possible to listen to thought as it flows through free associations. At the same time, the challenges of painting emerge—those tied to a technique that demands dedication, passion, and commitment, alongside deeper psychological demands that must be confronted.
Your portraits are often set in a climate of waiting and contrasting emotions. The figures seem captured in a language of small gestures, rituals, flowers, and tattoos. Like a dance, every mark seems to call for interpretation and response. Yet the paintings refuse to explain themselves. Both the figures and those who observe them are in a state of suspension, leaving us to watch from the outside.
The surface of a painting becomes, for me, a place of great solitude—a silent, aphasic space, yet one inhabited by countless invisible presences. You’ve captured the hermetic aspect of my work well when you say the paintings refuse to explain themselves. I believe not everything can be explained. In fact, you don’t ask me about it, nor do I wish to clarify aspects that sometimes remain mysterious even to me. A work continues to exert its fascination over time if it retains some of its mystery.
A collector of mine, observing a series of works in my studio, once told me he sensed in my paintings a strictly anthropocentric interest and that they seemed painted under the influence of a magical compulsion. I found this comment very close to the way I relate to painting.
