You and I share a love for Italian culture, especially from a certain period. Where does that come from? Can you talk about movies you love, artists, music, actors and general Italian and European culture that you draw influences from?. Why does it speak to you as an artist?

This shared appreciation, for me, comes from a few sources, one being my uncle, who passed away a few years ago. He was half Italian half Maltese. As a child I would stay at my cousins place often, which was where I was exposed to food that now brings the warmest memories back. My aunties spaghetti & parmesan that I tasted was how I’ve judged every other plate that crossed my table from that point on. It sounds like no big deal to some but Australian food in the 1970's was very different to today, where immigration played a welcomed influence upon our national palette. It was impactful. Likewise, the era my parents & their siblings migrated to Australia has made me nostalgic over the years. The post war years of the 1950’s & 60’s held an optimism that we have lost today, I believe. There is also an attraction to the aesthetic simplicity of what I observe in some of the movies from this era. There’s this juxtaposition of modernity & the ancient world, which is very appealing to me. If you think of French new wave cinema which pushed boundaries, it was done on a shoestring & it became an artistic endeavour, same with Italian Cinema then, this mix of old world simplicity with style & charm has remained cool & iconic. I could cite many more things, like the golden age of travel & commercial illustration or the movie title work of Saul Bass etc, so these are just a few.

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