MADDALENA ZADRA
The method I use for mark making with ink gives a cave-like element to the work which produces a very tactile effect. The thread allows me to connect. I think very carefully about my choice of thread. I like it when the colour of the thread is in conversation with the canvas. It’s a game of balancing and contrasting.
“I like to collect. I like to read about fables, mythology, and poems. I listen to a lot of podcast. I write. I like to get inspired by feelings, objects, and meanings. I like to go to exhibitions if I feel stuck and I go to the British Museum every time I go to buy my canvas nearby. But I also get inspired by the streets and the people around me.”
When I make my work, I make it for my own pleasure, because I enjoy it, and because I love making it.
I usually start by drawing, I draw a lot. Most of my works begin from a drawing or two, something from a thought. I start by painting my canvases; I have them spread around my studio depending on sizes. They could be for a specific piece, or connected from old pieces. I use a printing technique to add the figurative element that can be very figurative or more abstracted depending on the piece. From thereon it is a playful journey of adding and taking away, moving and readjusting working with colours and shapes. I then sew the pieces together, leaving the stitching visible. This fuses the different elements, but also the stitching itself plays its own role in the story.
I use acrylic, ink, pencils, thread and canvas. Every element is very important to me and has a different value to the work. The acrylic is spread on the canvas in a washed layer, something multiple layers, to keep the canvas very light and delicate. At the moment I work with both stretched and un-stretched paintings, both are equally important to me.
Maddalena Zadra (b. 1996, Italy) lives and works in London. She studied at the University of Brighton, graduating in 2018, and has since shown nationally and internationally including Hard as Nails at Quench Gallery, Margate, UK (2021/2022); End of Summer Lights at Anderson Contemporary, London, UK (2021); N.43 with Atelier LK, London, UK (2021); Cats Mother, Her, She, Organhaus Gallery, Chongqing, China (2019); and 'FBA Futures', Mall Galleries, London, UK (2019).
