Interview by Jimon

1-Where do you live and create at the moment? I live and work in Panni, Puglia Italy.

2-What was your first interaction with art? I can remember watching my father at his easel painting a landscape when I was Five years old.

3-Did you study art or is it inherent? If yes where?  I studied at the University of Calgary, Canada. It was a formality. Conceptualism was in mode at the time, but it didn’t interest me because I wanted to make paintings. I was fortunate to have had teachers who left me to follow my own path.

4-Are you the maverick in the family or are there other artists in the family? My father worked as an artist in the advertising department for a multinational petroleum company. He was also an avid landscape painter. I was allocated a workspace in his studio at a very young age. I would spend my Saturdays watching and assisting and creating my own art.

5-How did you acquire your style? Art school didn’t equip me with much technique, so I spent a few years learning how to draw, in an academic sense that is. This gave me the tools to assemble the things I want to see in a painting.

6-How long have you been making art and what led you to start? I’ve been making art for my entire adult life. Fifty years at least, but I can’t remember a time, even as a child, when I wasn’t creating something.

7-Who is your favorite artist? Picasso.

8-What advice would you give putative collectors? Have the courage to get out of your comfort zone. Acquire something that makes you laugh or scares you a bit.

9-What is the origin of each of your paintings? I would say that each new piece is a continuation of that which preceded it, like a new entry into my ongoing visual diary. However my unfettered-intuition guarantees that things almost never turn out the way I expect them to.

10-Is there any reality behind the characters in your paintings?  My characters live just above or just below reality, in a kind of limbo zone or purgatory.

11-How do you describe success as an artist? I’ve been a full time artist all my adult life, and I still get anxious and excited every time I start anew in the studio. That kind of engagement is the epitome of success.

12-If you could live in a museum anywhere in the world which would it be? The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, it’s an encyclopedia museum and therefore has a bit of everything I need.

13-What do you dream about?  Spaces that transform, snow, wandering thru empty downtowns full of skyscrapers, banquets.

14-Do you have a place/person/thing that you visit for inspiration? That would probably be my studio, which is so full of stuff that it’s like a giant reliquary.

15-If you could have dinner with three artists living/dead who would be at your table? Pablo Picasso, Francisco Goya, Jean Dubuffet.

16-Name three things you can’t live without in your studio.  My easel, my accumulation of found objects, my south light.

17-If you were asking the questions what question would you ask and please answer the question.

If you get blocked or go stale what do you do?  I work on a sculpture because it’s such a different sensibility than my painting, it’s a great reboot!

18-How would someone find you on social media? Instagram: @jim_picco

19-Please name the first thing that comes to your mind while reading the following:

Art = Breathing

Food = Joy

Sports = Boring on TV

Politics = The Gong Show

God = The one with a million faces

Rich = Share the wealth

Luxury = Hiring a car and driver for an

extended period

Sex = Smorgasbord

Picasso = Everything from A to Z

Religion = Chaos