Gianna Putrino received her BFA from the State University of New York at Oswego (2014) and her Master’s in Fine Arts from the New York Academy of Art (2017). She has exhibited her work in group shows and solo exhibitions throughout the Southern Tier of New York as well as New York City. She is the recipient of the Fredrick R Xlander Emerging Artist Award and has received two consecutive grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Currently residing in Brooklyn, NY, her work is a response to the nostalgia and desire for an imagined world, a space between memory and reality.
There is a difference between land which is “earth” and what is “landscape”, in that the latter is loaded with wishful thinking. In the words of Simon Schama, “Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.” My work seeks to create a disrupted space between memory, reality, expectation, and experience. The oversimplification of shape and exaggeration of color, allows me to project my own notions of presence into landscapes that cannot be found on any map.
Expectation, nostalgia, and imagined memory are all ideas woven into the fabric of my work. I aspire to elicit recollections or a sense of yearning, leaving the viewer unable to pinpoint the precise time and place suggested by the artwork. I delve into how our perceptions of past moments differ from their original experiences. Questions arise about the malleability of memory—how much is imagined or altered to accommodate feelings of nostalgia, escapism, or a desire to romanticize?
In creating my fantasy worlds, my focus shifts inward, using the landscape as a vehicle to explore the departure from childhood while simultaneously trying to recreate the naivety of that mental environment. I find fascination in our ability to idealize the past, questioning whether our mental landscapes, much like our memories, are loaded with wishful thinking.