Making a Fresco Painting
Punto de Encuentro (day 16)/Meeting Point (day 16) by Daniela Rivera, 2025. Etching with lime and pigment powder monotype on Magnani Pescia, 18" X 23¾". Photo by Caira Art Editions.
What if painting did not depend on the image it depicts, but on how it is built? What if painting were not a surface, but a structure, a crystal that defies time, carrying the memory of its own making as it ages? What if we shift the verb from painting to making a painting? What if painting were less about mastering depiction, and more about entering an intimate dialogue with the history and formation of its materials? This workshop is a space to formulate these and many other questions through making. Together, we will work through the history, engage with the present, and explore the possible futures of Fresco in our culture, studying traditional techniques and exploring contemporary adaptations of this ancient process. At the end of our workshop you will have incorporated a new process into your toolkit, understand materials, color, and painting anew, and created a painting that has a body, a memory, and a life of its own. All levels welcome.
Daniela Rivera (she, her) is a multidisciplinary artist, professor of Studio Art at Wellesley College, visiting artist for the MFA program at Boston University, and a mother. She received a BFA from the School of Arts at Universidad Catolica in Santiago, Chile, and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her research focuses on the migration of culture, structures of power, and the body. Trained as a painter and a drawer, Rivera is interested in challenging disciplinary boundaries and incorporating the history of materials and processes as crucial for the construction of meaning.