From the Street to the Canvas

The Working Process

My work is born from the street from what is usually walked over, crossed, and then forgotten.
Tires recovered from landfills objects worn down by time and urban movement become pictorial tools, true brushes.

These wheels, once meant to move through the city, are removed from their original function and reactivated through color. Dipped into paints and pigments, they roll across the canvas, leaving tire marks: authentic, physical, unrepeatable signs.

The technique is based on reuse and on the transformation of everyday gestures. The tire mark, which would normally be erased by the passage of people, time, or weather, is instead fixed onto the canvas. What is ephemeral becomes permanent.
The street turns into pictorial language.

The movement of the wheel across the surface can never be fully controlled: it is an instinctive gesture that retains the energy of its original use. Each pass generates a unique composition, where chance interacts with artistic intention. The result is a map of traces a visual memory of movement, time, and urban experience.

This process makes passage, wear, and stratification visible. Painting does not represent the street: it absorbs it.

Traces in Time

This approach is rooted in my artistic research, also presented in the solo exhibition Traces in Time (May 19–31, 2018, Galleria Gadarte, Florence).
In this context, the use of wheels and circular objects marked a fundamental moment in my practice, shaping works that resemble irregular road surfaces and textures shaped by human passage.

“These traces express a spontaneous gesture that breaks free from routine and becomes a work of art, disrupting the cycle of everyday life in an attempt to pursue the fleeting eternity of time.”
Claudia Becchimanzi, press release Traces in Time, 2018