About
I am guided by an unyielding desire to expand my creative boundaries. My art practice and inner work reflect an unstoppable pursuit of growth and self-discovery.
Biography
Delfina Piretti is a visual artist and expressive arts psychotherapist with a studio in San Francisco. Piretti’s studio work incorporates painting, cyanotypes, photography and interactive installations. Her artwork is informed by inner world explorations via wilderness vision fasts, body/mind healing, Zen Buddhism and going upside down. Delfina was named after her Italian Nonna.
She holds a BA in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Photography from Empire State College, Rochester NY, and an MA in Clinical Psychology and Expressive Arts Therapy from Antioch University West, San Francisco CA. Delfina also studied in Buffalo University’s Visual Studies Workshop., Adult Education classes at UC Berkeley and San Francisco Art Institute, Larry Robinson’s Oakdale Studios, Anderson Ranch Arts Center and California College of the Arts. She taught Expressive Arts Therapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies for ten years.
Artist Statement
My art practice explores life's bigger questions: our cosmology, inner life, and connection and disconnection to our bodies. What does it mean to be fully alive, to make visible the invisible and connect more intimately with the Earth? What is my relationship to death? My research and inspiration comes from my Zen meditation practice, vision fasts in the desert, medicine journeys, dream analysis, death cafes and somatic experiencing body work.
I work with themes of impermanence, dreams, collective grief, injustice and the body. I’ve fabricated and painted meteorites, from wood panels inspired by stories of people who have experienced close calls with a meteorite fall. These kind of quirky near death experiences bring us into direct contact with our impermanence, and can show us the value of life itself.
I’ve been investigating ways to connect more intimately with the Earth, ways of knowing our innermost selves and our interdependence. I am an explorer, an excavator of the substance of existence, aiming to create work that inspires contemplation of our place in the Universe , and curiosity about the invisible- our inner life and beyond.
My installations include: The Sin Eater Cafe, Tabula Rasa, and A Dream Repository parachute tent. The Sin Eater was created during a residency in Italy, exploring my cultural roots.came The life size sculpture, half dolphin, half Italian grandmother, invites visitors to write their confessions and transgressions on pasta and feed it to her.
My painting process begins with movement, music and poetry to source energy. Using graphite I write poems and make gestures with sumi ink on the canvas. The underpainting springboards the feeling I am going for with color and form to follow. I love mixing in organic materials, mineral powders, pine needles, marble dust and sand. It’s not unlike my play in the woods as a young child, making food with leaves, mud and twigs.
During Covid, I began making cyanotypes in the ocean, becoming more intimate with tidal rhythms and how water and light leave their marks. I love the deep blues echoing ocean and night sky. I no longer make them because the process bleeds cyanotype chemicals into the ocean, countering my ecological values.
I’m deeply inspired by Ana Mendieta’s earth-body artwork. I’ve been experimenting for years in my art practice with ways to connect with the earth more directly. I’ve been photographing myself lying face down on the ground, as a way of physically supporting grief, letting body meet earth with contact and weight. I also spent a year photographing myself doing handstands in public places, when I turned 60. Inversions are an immediate way of entering the present moment and feeling the ground. Elder upside down, a quiet defiance of the idea that aging means disappearing, and a metaphor for our upside down world in this time of crisis.
As an elder living in the flow of many generations, I feel called to take part in the movement to heal and rebirth the planet in this last quarter of my life.
Curriculum Vita
Over twenty years as a visual artist: painting & interactive installations; committed to ongoing artistic growth and expression, as well as community art education and public art-making.
Shows
2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 Artspan Open Studios at 1890 Bryant Street Studios.
2023 Death & Ritual Group Show , Diptych Image Transfers on Wood Panels, UMA Gallery, Oakland, CA
2023 Pyramid Scheme Group Show , Cyanotype on Fabric, Bass and Reiner Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2023 SKY Group Show , Mixed media Photography, Drawing Room Gallery S.F. , CA
2019 Solo Show : Inside Out, San Francisco Zen Center
2017 Busvan Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Group Show & Benefit "Message in a Bottle" Surfrider Foundation
2016 Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland CA. Group Show "Songs for Women Living with War"
2016 Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Group Show: "Welcome to the Left Coast"
2015 Mission Artist United Open Studios/Workspace , San Francisco, CA
2014 Artspan Open Studios, Workspace Art Studios and Somart Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2014 Verge Center for the Arts Opening Exhibition, Group Show “Champagne”, Sacramento, CA.
2013 Artspan Open Studios. Workspace , San Francisco, CA.
2013 Solo Exhibition/ New Work , Zen Center, San Francisco , CA.
2012 Juried Community Art Exhibit, Sofia University, Palo Alto, CA.
2012 Art Span Open Studios/ Workspace Art Studios and Somart Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
2012 Mission Artist United Spring Open Studios Juried Group Show/ Workspace Limited , San Francisco, CA.
2010 Art Span Open Studios/ Workspace Limited Art Studios, San Francisco, CA.
2010 Dream Play Art & Performance Event, Sin Eater Cafe & Dream Repository, San Francisco, CA.
2010 Art Span Open Studios Paintings and Installation: Sin Eater Cafe, Workspace Limited, San Francisco, CA.
2009 Art Span Open Studios , Paintings and Installation: Dream Repository,Workspace Limited, San Francisco, CA.
2005 Art Span Open Studios, Paintings, Workspace Limited, San Francisco, CA.
2006 Art Span Open Studios, Paintings, Workspace Limited, San Francisco, CA.
2007 Art Span Open Studios, Paintings, Workspace Limited, San Francisco, CA.
2008 Art Span Open Studios, Paintings/ Group Show at Workspace Gallery and Somart Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
2004 Sacred Prostitute Group Show; Springer-Croke Fine Art , San Francisco, CA.
2003 Poetry and Painting /Group Show, New Langton Arts, San Francisco, CA.
2002 Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA. Community Education Student Group Show.
2001 Group Show of Paintings. The Musical Offering Café, Berkeley, CA.
2000 Cab Top Art Ads: Creation and installation of four posters on top of taxi cabs in San Francisco, CA. A project of the SF Art Commission, in collaboration with women of The SAGE Project and public artist Johanna Poethig.
1999 Influence/Confluence Group Show of seven painters. San Francisco Antique and Design Mall Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
1998 Solo Show of Mixed Media Paintings, Bean There Café, San Francisco, CA.
1996 Public Art Project with incarcerated women: Installation of six kiosk posters in downtown San Francisco. A project of the SF Art Commission.
Conferences / Presentations
Guest lecturer, San Francisco Art Institute, S.F., CA. June 2013. Course title: Fresco Painting; Lecture and experiential: Painting on the Cave Wall: Origins of the Creative Process.
Artist Residency : Palazzo Rinaldi. Guest artist: Open Air Children’s Art Workshop ( Title: Dream the World into Being), Pollino National Park, Noepoli, Italy, August 2009
Guest lecturer, California College of the Arts (CCA), San Francisco, CA, October 2007. Course title: The Complete Fresco. Lecture title: Painting on the Cave Wall: Origins of the Creative Process.
Education & Training
M.A., Clinical Psychology, Concentration in Creative Art Therapies, Antioch University, San Francisco, CA, 1982
B.A., Liberal Arts/Photography, SUNY Empire State College and The Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, 1977
Anderson Art Ranch Painting Workshop : Abstraction, Surface & Meaning/ Leslie Shows 2019.
California College of Art , San Francisco, CA. : Abstract Painting with Patrick Dintino 2017 - 2018.
Study with professional artist Larry Robinson, Oakdale Painting Studios, San Francisco, CA, 1996-present.
SF Art InstituteGlenn Hirsch; Thekla Hammond
Painting Critique with Eugene Rodriguez 2005-2010
AFFILIATIONS
Art Span, San Francisco, CA.
1890 Bryant Street Studios, San Francisco, CA
Mission Artist United, San Francisco