Donatella Ballisai

Donatella Ballisai has painted since childhood. Her early classical training gave her a sense of composition that she carried into abstraction. Experimentation remains central to her practice. She brings together acrylics, resins and pigments to explore how colour acquires depth through layers of varying transparency.

Sardinia, where she was born, remains a touchstone in her artistic journey. The island’s sea, rocks and light have sharpened her sensitivity to surfaces and to the way they change with distance and viewpoint.

With an instinctive eye for beauty, Ballisai finds it in many forms: in the proportions of a building as much as in the craftsmanship of an everyday object. She is drawn to architecture for the way proportion, materials and light give a space its character. That same attention to relationships between elements informs her painting.