Visual Strolls
seasonal residency
Visual Strolls is a residency space for artists who share an affinity for landscapes and wilderness, inner and outer. Foresta is changing with every season as the real forest does. In cyclical circularity it celebrates changing seasons of nature and of our lives. As snow melts away, as days grow longer, as leaves change colour, as they fly with the wind, as stillness settles in, as warmth returns, as birds cross continents — at the turn of each seasonal moment we invite a different artist to bring a new time of the year to Foresta by creating a portrait of time that later becomes part of the permanent Museum of Seasons.
The author of a spring seasonal portrait in 2016 is Viola Niccolai. Viola is an illustrator and picture book maker. Her book "The fox and the foal" (published in 2014 by Topipittori) became one of our favourites. Below you will find a selection of some of the most cherished as well as the yet unpublished Viola's works. For further exploration and insights into her creative process find our interview with her at Creativity Cookbook.
Spring 2016 Portrait
“Drawing for me is a way to see things in a clear way. When I want to know a face, a body, a landscape or a scene I try to draw them, to fix something in my mind and in my eyes as well as on the paper. It becomes a way to understand reality, and at the same time to express what I feel about it. The challenge is to find the best medium to say something new every time.”
About Visual Strolls
Visual Strolls is not only an online gallery, an exhibition room, a portrait into the work of the invited artist. It is also a part of our long-term research, understanding arts and creativity as forces that change human states of attention in manifold ways, as forms of cognition and perception, divergent perspectives and poetry of vision, access to intuition and imagination, and empowerment for conscious creation of culture. You can read more about Art into Life research here.
Cover image: Viola Niccolai