Barbara Agreste OFFICIAL HOME PAGE - Paintings, video art, film.

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Barbara Agreste’s art

official home page

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Barbara Agreste begun to make many drawings since the age of four: many of the illustrated fairy tales books she read during her childhood, and the animations she saw, influenced her way of representing the human figure, and shaping the imaginary world she has conveyed on canvas and film.

She was also inspired by the natural landscape that surrounded the house she lived in with her family as a child, which was built on the top of a hill, immersed in a huge forest made of pines and oaks: an environment full of small living creatures that she figured as bizarre characters from those fantasy stories she loved to read.

Barbara has always thought that the forest is full of mystery and magic, and that fairy tales, and the oral tradition of folkloric narratives that stretch back in time, has helped keeping alive a feminine world of wisdom and knowledge so much tied to nature, that was doomed to almost disappear since the starting of the witches persecution in the middle ages.

It was because of this turning point of history in which the demonisation of women (and therefore the disrespect of nature) was introduced by an overwhelming misogynistic and industrialized world, that today we have come to a way of using technology to manipulate the environment for profit destroying all life dwelling within its confines.

Twenty years after Barbara left her home village, the beautiful landscape surrounding her Gothic house lost almost all the magic due to the fact that the trees and vegetation in which it was immersed, were destroyed. It happened because an abusive and excessive urbanization of the countryside brought an enormous amount of cement on those hills wiping out and killing indiscriminately all the existing wonders of nature and the fantastic creatures that had reigned there ever since.

Barbara believes that drawings, paintings, and films, alongside stories from ancient times and also all the literature that can help unfolding our past in relation to the present, have the power of making that world of magic – inextricably linked to nature – come back alive again, and help us seeing our planet in a more human and respectful way, possibly taking our thoughts in the direction of seeing our living surroundings as our friend instead of a frightening enemy.

Art in short serves a purpose: that of making us learn that the earth, if left with its natural state thriving with trees, is the only home that supports our life; art functions as the medium which restores faith in a better life of friendship and caring where there would be room for all the living creatures, where animals are respected, and gardens become holy again, helping our contemporary, divided, and poisoned world return to a state of cheerful health, with space for temples celebrating eternal and ethereal nature, and love for humanity as a spontaneous happy fountain of inspiration and solutions for a better future.

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