imagination and metamorphosis between creatures of this world and the humanization of all things. I believe that our imagination connects us to the mysteries of life, the truest part of ourselves.
MK: Is there any particular reason a girl is always the subject of your paintings? Nicoletta: The characters in my pictures reflect my alter ego. My stories are about the mysteries of adolescence. My girls

innocently and sensually allure, without being completely aware of this delicate passage. In my playful way, I like to suggest a mischievous sensuality. Some of my work brings to mind the iconography of the martyrs... St. Sebastian, St.Teresa.... bodies 'slain' in pain, but appearing almost in the throes of pleasure at the same time. These and tormented; and the more wounded and pictures show bodies of martyrs punished tormented they are, the more

they shout their sensual presence. My protagonists are fairies that I dream of, candidly expressing cruelty, loneliness and fragility, and simultaneously flaunting beauty and madness. My work is poetic on the surface and speaks of a child’s sweetness, while the contradictions, like the dark side of a nursery rhyme, betray my deeper anxieties.
MK: You are one of the most recognized artists of modern surrealism and your