Meet the IGI Member: Mario Sughi

Where do you work and what does it look like?

I work here at home, at Seapoint, in this comfortable little room. Unfortunately despite my attraction for minimalism the room now is full of too many anomalous objects and other unnecessary things.

It reminds me of either an illustration with too many colours, or of an illustrator with too many preoccupations (a collection of familiar self-portraits). But I like the window facing my desk and the way it opens onto Dublin bay.

And I love the pleasant silence surrounding the entire place, from Monday to Sunday.

Can you give us an idea of your work process?

I believe that the work of an illustrator betrays his desire to make use of imagination to recreate the world in which we all live. I also believe that without a vision and the urgency to express it there is no great illustration.

Now it seems to me that my illustrations hint at a desire to recreate a world where everything, every person as well as every situation, could perfectly fall in the realm either of reality or unreality. How to achieve a sort of pleasant harmony out of this dualism is one of the greatest challenges of my work. No need to say that in the field of illustration my main concerns are about colour, space, proportion, volume etc… but a good amount of irony and intellectual considerations need also to be taken on account.

Certainly every time I start drawing some new character for my next illustration I know that I will start by looking and thinking of the real people living in our towns and cities. However once those people inhabit the pages of my finished drawings they must have a life of their own, and have completely left behind all the models they originated from.

The same is true for the landscapes, the objects and all the other elements of my work, because I don’t think that the background should be treated differently from what goes on the central stage.

Not surprisingly once the drawings are finished it is difficult even for me to penetrate them or to explain their exact meaning. To be honest I am always happy with the result of my work when a new sense of mystery has managed to displace all the previous certainty.

Do you see much change in your illustration over the years? If that’s the case, where do you think it is going?

I started drawing when I was young in my father’s studio. Pastels and pencils were my favourite mediums. I have never been good with brushes and painting. When I arrived in Dublin I took a break from illustration, I moved to history first and computer graphics then, and when I came back to illustration I did it through the doors of new digital mediums then becoming available: computers and graphic tablets. Now I use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator in liaison with digital photography.

I take pictures of people and landscapes and play a bit around with them. These have become the main references to my current illustrations. The composition these days is more complex than it used to be. This can be a plus, the works look more finished, though the risk is that they might become a bit too heavy. In my own view you can change the medium and the style as much as you need and desire, but the final work has always to be as light and elegant as possible, otherwise your vision and its originality will be lost.

What inspires Mario?

The works of four English Painters: Stanley Spencer, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and David Hockney have the greatest influence on my work . What you have there are four completely different modern styles, a great amount of beauty and a surprising endless sense of humour.

Mario calls them ‘different modern styles’, and I would agree, but these artists are all inspired by the human figure and faces. While Hockney and Freud look more at breaking down or fracturing the elements to build the figure back up, Bacon delves into the psyche and Spencer comments more on the social context. All this seems to be reflected in Mario’s work – the inside and the outside of humanity.

You can check Mario’s portfolio in www.illustratorsireland.com

Links and comments by Margaret Anne Suggs

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 10:30 am and is filed under Illustration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.