In her seventh decade, Italian painter reaches for the sky with her unconventional look at the 12 zodiac constellations, Lin Qi discovers.

At 76, Milan-based artist Angela Occipinti continues to be exuberant and creative. She often works as late as 4 am, including the night before her debut exhibition in Beijing opened.

"When an idea springs up in my mind, I have to realize it as soon as possible. I'm curious to see the final presence.

"It is like reading a detective novel and people can only relax after they know who the murderer is. It is an addiction and one can't control himself," she says.

Occipinti's solo show is at the Meridian Space, a gallery and cafe tucked in a new compound of cultural institutions and art space behind the National Art Museum of China. Just as the title, Magic of Heaven and Earth, suggests, Occipinti displays dozens of paintings and engravings to convey the enlightenment she has felt when observing the sky and the stars.

She has brought her "kite"-themes works, in which the high-flying toy recurs as an important totem in her life.

"The kites are symbols that contain the magic place where the most mysterious part of the deep self lies. Their flights live in symbiosis with the rhythmic revolution of the stars - measured with wind, space, clouds, tempest, lightning, meteors and rainbow in a continuous dialogue between sky and Earth," she says.

She shows creations in oil on canvas that center on the starry night and 12 Zodiac constellations, in which she positions the Earth as a tiny dot in the whole universe. Under her imaginative brushwork, the immense sky and the rise and fall of stars together constitute a deep sea of infinity, in which she feels her thoughts erupting and her self lost in exploring the universe.

Occipinti says she like things that are unconventional. She is happy that her works are making their first appearance at a gallery instead of a museum, where people can drink, talk and touch her works.

"When people come to see my works, it doesn't feel like they are watching something at a museum. They will feel that they can directly communicate with me like a friend or a family member."

The native of Perugia, she was raised as a child with vanguard spirit, who was destined to become an artist, rather than an obedient housewife, commonly seen "focusing on the needlework on the streets" in her hometown.

She found her earliest inspiration of art in the studio of an uncle on the maternal side, a noted sculptor. During childhood, she spent a lot of time playing with clays and sculpting small animals, habits that helped her cultivate an artistic sense and find the path of life upon which she would embark.

Occipinti uses her dowry - woolen threads and a weaving machine given by her mother - to create components of her installation and engraving works, and to tailor "artists' books", a unique art piece that is realized in the form of a book.

"My mother hoped I could be good at needlework. She always asked me to be very careful because the machine was made in Germany and quite expensive.

"What I did was to combine her wish with my dreams. When I worked on the weaving machine to produce an artist's book, the joyful feeling to see the needles flying on the paper reminded me of Lucia Fontana, the Italian artist who founded spatialism."

Occhipinti worked with Fontana on the making of engravings and ceramics. People can feel the influence of spatialism thanks to the way she highlighted the stars with fluorescent paints to increase viewers' impression of space.

"Words are too inefficient to describe the connotations of her works. Viewers only have two direct feelings at the first sight of her works: like or dislike," says Wang Ji, a longtime friend and the exhibition's curator. "If they dig further into her art world, they will find that even in her late 70s, Occhipinti is still a little girl inside."

The world and the universe in her eyes look simple and pure. She wishes to bring her visions and adventures to everyone who stands before her works, Wang says.

Contact the writer at linqi@chinadaily.com.cn

Italian artist Angela Occipinti presents Magic of Heaven and Earth in Beijing. Photos By Wang Ji / for China Daily

Occipinti's works convey the enlightenment she has felt when observing the sky and the stars.

(China Daily 09/02/2014 page20)