Mineral Gestures
Mineral Gestures is an ongoing body of work that explores the expressive language of mineral matter. Working with iron oxides, copper carbonate, black gesso, and other earth-derived materials, Lia Galletti creates paintings that evoke weathered walls, geological formations, archaeological traces, and surfaces transformed by time.
Rather than depicting the landscape, these works emerge from a direct dialogue with the physical qualities of the materials themselves. Pigments settle, stain, erode, and accumulate, allowing each surface to develop through a process of discovery rather than control. The gestures recorded in the work are both human and elemental, suggesting the slow forces of erosion, sedimentation, oxidation, and memory.
Drawing on a lifelong engagement with painting, sculpture, and natural materials—including stone, clay, metals, shells, and minerals—Mineral Gestures brings these experiences together into a visual language where painting becomes an excavation and the surface itself becomes a place of presence, history, and transformation.