Before speaking of romanticism and esotericism, why acrylics? I think it is a modern medium. It is practical and comfortable. And it allows me to imitate as well the nuances of watercolor as the impact of knife painting with oil colors.

Romantic Art

And now, why romantic art? Romanticism is in my character, is my way of seeing life. Do you know Baudelaire's definition of Romanticism? He said Romanticism is a "mode of feeling". And my paintings express a "mode of feeling". In New York I have been defined as "a contemporary romantic" artist (Maurice Taplinger).

Esoteric Art

Am I only a romantic? The Agora-Gallery press release 2009 explains;

"Although her use of dramatic mood is drawn directly from the Romantic tradition, Mazzoldi’s color pallet and soft modeling of form is reminiscent of the Old Masters of the Renaissance. A spiritual thinker who buries herself in each work of art, Mazzoldi is also deeply affected by the philosophical message of the Christian Esoteric teacher Daskalos".

Are my paintings both romantic and esoteric? Even if I am fundamentally a romantic,I like also expressionist paintings. Do you know Munch? What a wonderful expression of feeling! His painting "the Scream" is vibrating. You can feel the despair, the fear in it!

It expresses more than a simple emotion. Try to master such an "emotion"! You don't get it! It expresses what I call "a force". Yet, my aim is to paint these "forces" and also the "games" (yes, just the ones of transactional analysis!) that happen between them.

When I speak of games (or when I describe them in my paintings) I don’t mean the ones that children play, but the ones among adults. Furthermore, they are not the ones that we normally call “games” (playing cards, doing sport, roulette gambling…). They are subtler. They play on relationships, and just on the ones that are so important to us, so important that, without them, our life seems to be void.

We are fully immersed in this kind of games. What girls talk about? What boys? What tells you a friend, when he opens his heart? They only talk about the games they are playing, or would play, or they even talk about the games of their neighbours and acquaintances.

People play games and don’t notice it. They want to take everything too seriously. Rarely games make us happy. More often, they cause dramas and tragedies and they can end in war and disorder. Adults games can be much more harmful than the ones of children.

This kind of game is a double-edged weapon: it can be a joyful experience that helps us to live a plain and easy life or it can lead us into tragedy.

A game often takes us too far, further than we thought, further than we expected. Things go out of control, we can’t manage things anymore and we feel drawn into a whirl that carries us along. Who chooses for us? Esoteric master Gurdjieff confirms that: “Men are machines and nothing but mechanical actions can be expected of machines” (Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, by P._D._Ouspensky )

But, who plays these games? Gurdjieff and Ouspensky spoke of the many "I"s in us. Assagioli called them "sub-personalities". Esoteric master Daskalos called them "elementals". Esoteric psychology speaks of "thought forms". Don't you find some of them in paintings of late Goya , for instance in his The Sleep of Reason?

Why I put "I"s (personalities), games and forces into my paintings? Because we constantly inhibit many "I"s in us. My romantic esoteric target is to set them free in my paintings. I try to give them the right to exist. I hope art makes it possible.

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