Gianmaria Aprile, with a multifaceted background and a passion for nature, engraves and prints strictly by hand in his workshop in Italy, close to Varese. Gianmaria prints the leaves to make them immortal, eternal, fixing them on paper. His technique is a mix between engraving and monotype. Each piece is unique.

A short description of your collection.
I engrave and mold by hand, with the help of an old wooden press and the baren that I use to highlight or overshadow some areas of the print. I have subconsciously mixed different printing techniques, such as engraving and monotyping, and what I like about my project  is the limited number of copies and the creation of unique and unrepeatable pieces. 

What inspires you?
I have asked myself this several times and the only answer I gave myself was by observing the walls of the house where I grew up, which are full of paintings and prints; a sort of indirect imprinting. Of course I think that all experience is a stimulus that pours into one's work: people near and far, one's ghosts, music, books, what is observed and how it is observed.

The choice of subjects is certainly linked to my pleasure in wandering through fields and woods and to the surprises and discoveries I received in the first attempts to print leaves and engrave wood. Surprises that I have defined as Unexpected Feelings.

Is there a metaphorical place yet to be discovered that you would like to approach?
The search for beauty, of course considering what is my personal vision of beauty and then the curiosity to discover what is hidden by digging and experimenting in each print. I try to have patience and to devote time - often even just mental - to process ideas and shape intuitions.
I have been printing leaves for years and I have not yet got tired because each time I find a small door that opens onto a world still unexplored by me.

I have been printing leaves for years and I have not yet got tired because each time I find a small door that opens onto a world still unexplored by me.

An artist’s task?
I always listen to a lot of music. When I print the choice often falls on minimal / ambient electronics or jazz or raw, naked, visceral free jazz, often "solo". Two very distant worlds in terms of sound, but in both cases, I find stimuli and ideas to transpose into my work. I could say that without music there would be no my prints. (John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Abe Kaoru, Jan Jelinek, Oren Ambarchi, Masayoshi Fujita, Lucretia Dalt, Porya Hatami)

Your project style in three words.
Instead of using adjectives, I could describe my prints by saying that “what I try is to make the leaves immortal and timeless, giving them a new dimension”.

What is the task of an artist today?
Not being able to define what for me is "an artist" - it would be a long and articulate speech - I could rely on a sentence read in a graphic novel by Brecht Evens (Gli amatori ): "The artist's task is to move the boundaries of his perception further and further away... and translate what he has observed as clearly as possible".