This week we welcome Gabriella Mazza, an Italian-born artist, art writer, and linguist based in New York City. Profoundly spiritual, she has pondered the meaning of existence since she was able to form thoughts in her head. Growing up Catholic in a southern Italian family, she soon moved away from the dogmatism of her faith and embraced eastern spiritual practices, converting to Tibetan Buddhism in 2016. Her work illustrates the beauty and enigmatic allure of the spirit world through various manifestations of the female divine, in an attempt to understand what lies beyond the physical plane.
Mazza studied art at the New York Academy of Art, SVA, Cooper Union, and the New York School of the Arts, but she is mostly self-taught. Her exhibitions include Ode to the Goddess and Beyond Beauty at the School of Visual Arts’ ContinuED Project Space, Satellite Art Show at Miami Art Week, Paradice Palase and Greenpoint Gallery in Brooklyn, ChaShaMa’s exhibition spaces in NYC, and LIC Arts. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Press, the Orenda Arts Journal and is included in private collections in Europe and the United States. Mazza is a member of New York City art platforms Paradice Palase and Visionary Projects. She is currently learning how to weave and tuft in order to make tapestries of her paintings.
��My work explores the mysteries of the spirit world through a contemporary feminine lens. I create fantastical landscapes inhabited by deities, angels, and mythical beings that represent highly evolved astral realms and transcend the space and time barriers of the material plane. To convey heightened realities, I create maximalist compositions with a highly saturated palette of bright and fluorescent colors, using a blend of acrylic paint, gouache, colored pencils, crayons, and collaged paper,” she writes.
“I am influenced by medieval painting and Christian iconography, particularly the narratives and palettes of Giotto and Fra Angelico, bestiaries, and the illuminated manuscripts, and incorporate symbolism from these traditions into my work while also creating symbols of my own. As a linguist who studied modern and ancient languages, I am fascinated with new and archaic forms of communication as well as the emotional underpinnings of text. I invent esoteric codes and add Greek-sounding or Latin words to the compositions to conjure an aura of mystical sacredness. My paintings access the viewer’s higher consciousness and act as portals through humanity’s highest divine potential.”
