Marco Gallotta: From Passion to Paper
Paper. Look around. You use it to jot down a quick shopping list. You clutch it as you read from a magazine. You copy it, print it, and downright take it for granted. For one man, paper is seen as a platform, a canvas, a blank stage of potential. To him, paper can tap into emotions. It can be manipulated to unleash feelings of beauty, feelings of inspiration. Marco Gallotta is an artist, and his original and unique style of painting and paper cutting gives an authentic look into the elegance and hidden strife of the human experience.
A New York City artist by way of southwestern Italy, Gallota is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology. Ever since being exposed to the museums of Europe by his father, Gallota has had a passion to create and a drive to connect artistry to human emotions. “I don’t really have an outcome in mind, but I always have a message,” Galotta says about his process. He takes any idea and portrays it in a way that he believes tells a story. He starts with simple sketches, keeping this idea in his head. Then, the paint is methodically applied to the sketches. When the colors are precise, the cutting begins. Galotta uses a sort of X-acto knife to cut out extremely detailed patterns and layers into the already painted paper. “I’m always changing as I cut, never with an exact finished product in my head.”
The human body is always a focal point in the cutouts. “It is always a part of my work. I love the body.” Looking at Galotta’s work, layers upon layers of painted paper are sometimes superimposed onto images of people and silhouettes. “The layers represent something beyond the person’s outer image. The layers are a way to look at the person’s inner self. It represents who we are, not just what we look like.”
Life has no roadmap, no instructions. Life has layers. It has climaxes and dips that create us and build upon who we truly are. Galotta embodies these experiences into his work, creating an image of emotion not perceived by a look at first glance. We will never understand the inner workings of another mind, another heart, but Galotta’s challenge every day is to see people for who they are, and to expose the complicated the layers that define them.
“I love what I do. I feel lucky that I am able to do this for a living.” Through his journey of creating, Galotta sometimes questioned himself. “Along the way I thought, why do I do this?” After collaborating with children’s charities and donating work to these organizations, Galotta realized that a lot of what he does is for one universal reason. “I want to give back with my art,” he says, boldly.
Currently living in Harlem with his wife and daughter, Marco Galotta has an ambition to touch lives with his art by grappling with emotions that most of us take for granted, just like the paper he creates from.
See more of Marco Gallotta’s incredible work here.
