‘This new body of work was inspired during my most recent trip to Italy and continues to highlight a nostalgic sensibility for my Italian heritage along with my interest in the melding of past and present values and cultures that occurs when one lives in another country.

In my paintings I seek to create a palimpsest of history executed through colour, texture and surface.  Richly coloured pigments are applied in powdered form to create a tactile, soft, velvet-like surface. Depth and atmosphere is created with layers of colour and markings. The pigments may reference colours portrayed in Renaissance paintings or Byzantine mosaics.  The combined colours and textures fixed within the surfaces of these art works are also intended to characterise and integrate the energetic contrasts and changes found upon the surfaces of historical Italian architecture and in the harsh Australian terrain.

This reinterpretation of existing cultural material is a fusion of my personal experiences as a contemporary Australian artist and my Italian heritage. In this context, ‘nostalgia’ refers to an embedded culture, which is released through the process of making art.

I envisage my artwork as a medium of creating universal links and I hope the individual viewer experiences the strong and esoteric qualities of these works at an emotional and visceral level.

Ultimately, I endeavour to transmit to the viewer a romantic notion of a transcendental or spiritual equilibrium – the kind of feeling that one often seeks when emersed in the current of a fast-transforming global society’.

                                                                                                            Anna Caione 2004

Anna Caione has exhibited works in several public and private collections, nationally and internationally.  The successful touring exhibition; ‘Via Vai, Comings and Goings,’ was shown in Italy and Melbourne.  This year Anna Caione was a finalist in several award exhibitions including the John Leslie Art Prize.  In 2003 she was awarded second place in the SBS Centenary of Federation Art Award.  Anna has recently been invited to exhibit her works in the European Cultural Festival, Genova, Italy.