Gio Botto – "I wanted to learn how to translate my energetic charcoal life drawings into paint"

My love for painting started at a young age, growing up surrounded by beautiful paintings by my mum (apple doesn’t fall far from the tree), but I didn’t get into oils until I hit a real low in my life and decided it was time for a big change. I immediately fell in love and haven’t looked back since, fully delving into the medium on my BA, making hundreds of works depicting boxing and MMA, something I gained love for through a close friend the year before I started the course.

The BA gave me the space and time to fully explore every aspect of the sport and its deep interconnectivity to the work ethic and mindset of a painter. I was challenged on my need to depict this unusual subject and supported through finding my place within it by the tutors and techs on the BA.

While I did continue painting boxing through the three years on the BA, I used the learning objectives to fully dive down every avenue of interest I had within the subject; the audiences' reactions, the sense of glowing atmosphere, the movement and speed, the power of the figures, the overwhelming feeling of defeat and its close relation to that feeling when a paintings doesn’t quite go how you’d hoped (and with that the feeling of triumph when it exceeds your expectations), the sense of mass of heavyweight boxers, the feeling of the ‘zone’, and in my final unit my own relation to the sport, making each of my three final exhibited works a fight for myself, painting up to 20 paintings on top of each other to depict the last few seconds of a bout where it hangs in the balance of defeat and victory.

I was encouraged to use the paint to explore these avenues and painted differently in almost every module of the course, taking reference from artists ranging from Rembrandt, Caravaggio and Bellows to contemporary artists such as Salman Toor and Marlene Dumas.

Throughout the course, I attended life drawing every week and have done since I was a teenager wherever I could. Looking back at my BA this was the most defining few hours a week in my learning. I was able to use this time to figure out the human anatomy, the weight of the figure and how to depict that within my work in the studio.

When I finished my BA, I wanted to learn how to translate my energetic charcoal life drawings into paint. I had been introduced to Dominic Shepherd, the MA Painting course leader, in my second year on the BA and knew he had the expertise and teaching methods to help me do this, so I applied to the MA as soon as I finished the BA.

I’m now a month into my MA and have stopped painting boxers to delve into the way I paint, the first unit being about deconstructing your way of working to figure out why you do what you do. I didn’t know I was going to stop painting boxers and there was no force involved in that decision, but the suggestion has helped me to fully explore the way I apply paint, the palette I use and the materials themselves without the constraints of my ‘usual’ body of work.

I’m currently working on a series of self-portraits, using my own face and body to depict my experience of life, the way some of my favourite artists such as Rembrandt, Sickert, Van Gogh and Edvard Munch did. I’m pushing myself to figure out the methods I use in my charcoal drawings and slowly translating them into paint already!

The seminars on the MA have been incredibly insightful and inspiring and I always take little pieces away that immediately filter into my practice in the studio, which is everything I wanted them to do for me.

If I could give on piece of advice to future AUB students, I’d tell them to take every opportunity to step outside your comfort zone with both hands, take risks within your work and immerse yourself within the learning experience, because you’ll look back and be genuinely amazed by your growth on the other side!