Rossana Feudo was born in Rome where she studied painting at the Accademia delle Belle Arti. For many years Feudo worked as a restorer of miniatures and antique paintings. During this period of intense study and work Feudo began to tease out from the old masters a  technique that she would soon perfect and claim as her own. She uses small, delicate brushstrokes and a subtle blending of colour to create paintings that appear to almost glow from within. The extremely high quality of Feudo’s paintings is quite rare in contemporary art, that she uses the medium tempera is in itself certainly individual. This traditional and painstaking method of painting on finely prepared panel gives Feudo's work a real sense of gravitas and distinction.

Feudo’s subjects range from apparently classical portraiture to quirky still life painting. She does not, however, paint what only the eye can see. The luminosity and clarity of her paintings call to mind past masters such as Bronzino and members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; she has a deep knowledge and appreciation of various pictorial languages. Like such artists Feudo is drawn to subjects from classical mythology and historical accounts. There is a humour and wit in her work which does place it firmly in twenty first century. She is never flippant, but there is definitely something a little mischievous behind the eyes of many of the characters she paints.

It was her paintings of women that first drew me to Rossana Feudo’s work. She does not merely depict the physical appearance of these figures, in each painting Feudo is able to convey something impossible to put into words. With the slight inclination of a face or a furtive glance that takes our eye beyond the picture plain Feudo creates ambiguity and hints at secrets yet to be revealed. Her figures are timeless both in terms of their beauty and the quality of their execution.

It is in her still life and allegorical paintings that Feudo’s imagination really takes flight. Whether it be an arrangement of delicious looking fungi or a group of angelic cherubs dancing to imaginary music the playfulness of her character and the sheer delight she takes in painting really come to the fore. There is always something slightly surreal about these seemingly ‘innocent’ arrangements. A combination of the grotesques of Hieronymus Bosch and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson often come to mind, but there is nothing sinister, nothing to fear.  She paints in a clear and readable manner but does not intend to be kept within the bounds of reality. Like a game of mirrors in which an image appears and vanishes, the true ‘meaning’ of Feudo’s subject matter reveals itself and then slips away.