How Waves Connect Laura Fauzzi to Her Art

Written by Sophia Koch, Special Project Experiential Learning in Journalism - Spring 2024

Florence University of the Arts – The American University of Florence, unveiled an art exhibition on March 14 for contemporary artist Laura Fauzzi. The evening was filled with lots of talk and laughter as local community members, and FUA - AUF students alike, attended the event. Guests were even able to observe Fauzzi as she explained and demonstrated her creative process in a live demonstration.

Laura Fauzzi is a Swedish-based self-taught artist. Starting at the age of 13, she developed a deep connection with art and creating movement. Fauzzi focuses on the sound of waves to control her breath while she paints. The paintings and drawings' final product illustrates how she might be feeling at the time or what energy she senses around her. When painting a black and white design, she focuses on her breathing. These paintings bring her to lightness just as it does when she performs yoga. “I have the same feelings that I have when I am drawing the ballerina and hear the sea with the pen, because in yoga you work with your breath to feel calm,” Fauzzi said. The lines are longer and elegant and look like people dancing freely. During her live painting, Fauzzi drew one of her black and white designs and made wave sounds, so the viewers could get a sense of what she experiences when creating her art.

FUA-AUF faculty member Piera Battista has been a fan of Fauzzi's, and actually owns one of her pieces. She was in attendance for the opening and shared that watching Fauzzi paint live was a piece to a puzzle in her life that was missing. “I can understand her life and history and what her creative process is like,” Battista said. 

Outside of creating art on canvases, Fauzzi loves dancing and went to dance school in Florence. Therefore, she loves to draw ballerinas dancing as a way to show her love for a different type of art. “I put it in my heart and then I put it on the canvas,” she said. The ballerinas she illustrates with the skirt have color to them to demonstrate the happiness she feels inside. Fauzzi recently started doing tai chi and has realized the movements she makes are the same ones as her ballerinas. In recent projects, these have evolved into wearing skirts because she joined a choir and had to wear a skirt, so she took that experience and added it to her dancers. “Everything I see in Florence, I take it and use it for my art,” Fauzzi said. 

Now, on the other hand, Fauzzi creates art that doesn’t show calmness. Some of her canvases were filled with a multitude of different colors that were surrounded by dark ones. She used acrylic to show texture to each of her paintings, in order to mirror feelings of anxiety, anger, or distress, by which one would just need to throw something. The colors show more emotion and the acrylic paintings reflect storms in the oceans, whereas the ballerinas’ paintings with color reflect joyfulness. 

In the next couple of years, Fauzzi hopes to create more art and even evolve her ballerinas into something more, although whatever that something may be is yet to be discovered within the process of artistic creation. She also wants to feature collages and hopes more people will connect to her work as she does when she senses the waves and emotions.

If you missed the opening, and are interested in viewing the exhibition, it is still available to be seen by the public at Corridoio Fiorentino of the Palazzi Community Center until April 10th.