"Michelina La Brigantessa" is one of my favorite pieces. My mother has the same name as La Brigantessa. This picture has a lot of background story to it. I made the piece inspired and fro the photo of her, Michelina de Cesare, that was taken during the times of the reunification of Italy. She is the most enigmatical and symbolic Brigantessa of the Briganti of the south of Italy that resisted to the Piedmonts' invasion and incorporation campaign.

I have always liked to paint strong woman in my pieces and she is definitely one that I wanted to reinterpret with my style and technique anchored in modern times. This piece means a lot to me personally too. It is a way for me to retrieve and recount with a part of my identity that I came to discover and search at a later part of my life while going back to live at the village where my grandparents came from and migrated to south America, specifically to Venezuela.