Il Giardino dei Segreti – The Murals

The frescoes from the Villa of Livia in the Museo Nazionale Romano Palazzo Massimo are a magical garden painted between 30-20 BCE, lost to time and not unearthed until 1863. The frescoes once graced the walls of a semi-subterranean dining room in a secondary residence of Livia Drusilla and Caesar Augustus in Prima Porta. The room is a gracious temple, an impossibly romantic illusion, verdant with impeccable stylizations while accurately detailing a multitude of flora and fauna—umbrella pines, oak, fir, quince, pomegranate, myrtle, date palms, roses, poppies, acanthus. Virtually every plant, bush or tree is blooming or bearing fruit in elegant rhythms despite a seasonally unattainable occurrence. Everywhere birds perch or careen in a gauzy blue-grey sky.

When I saw the room, I was absorbed as artist and viewer by the resonant beauty of these paintings—alone in a clandestine meeting with the endlessly sublime. I oscillated between meaning and memory, compelled to excavate links bridging the vestiges of art history to contemporary invention, orchestrating and aligning that which is inherited with that which is invented.

The work I make encompasses drawing, painting and photography, utilizing a variety of analogue and digital materials, tools and resources. While painting is my primary medium, photography and painting were fused and combined to shape the matrix on which the paintings and photographs for the Il Giardino dei Segreti exhibition are presented. Murals of multiple-exposure photographs—layered images of the frescoes, gardens in Rome, my gardens, written notes and my work in progress—line the walls of the gallery, implying an architecture of collective history and memory; a mirage of an archaic oasis. The murals can be seen on this page, without the paintings, and are available are permanent or temporary wall coverings.

Custom designed murals for any size wall, indoor and outdoor, are available. For more information please click the Enquire button or call me at: 505.699.3146

Il Giardino dei Segreti Office Wall, 2023 (not installed in the exhibition)

vinyl pigment print on vinyl mural substrate, 87 x 108 inches (64 sq ft), $3,840. (plus installation)

Il Giardino dei Segreti North Wall, 2023

vinyl pigment print on vinyl mural substrate, 112 x 129 inches (96 sq ft), $5,760. (plus installation)

Il Giardino dei Segreti Long Wall, 2023

vinyl pigment print on vinyl mural substrate, 112 x 282 inches (220 sq ft), $13,200. (plus installation)

Il Giardino dei Segreti Window Wall, 2023

vinyl pigment print on vinyl mural substrate, 96 x 80 inches (54 sq ft)

$3,240. (plus installation)