MICHELA
MARTELLO

born and raised in Italy and based in New York for the past 25 years. My painting—also expressed in ceramics and on paper—searches for an alchemical formula that unites opposites: East and West, earth and sky, ruin and repair. I draw on symbols found along my life path and decades of study in Eastern philosophies, traveling often to the East for research. I work with layered materials, reclaimed textiles, pigments, and stitched surfaces so images become vessels of memory and ritual. Symbol is pure magic for me: a way to translate inner states into visible form. The making can be difficult and intimate, but there is no greater joy than pursuing my voice through painting.