Born in 1943 in Toro, in the Southern Italian region of Molise, he starts his artistic journey at age 15 in Campobasso, Molise, where he receives his vocational training from two Master Painters, Angelo Fratipietro e Nicola Rago. In the early 60’s he works  in Germany, Rome and Canada. He eventually returns to Rome, where he now has his own studio a few steps away from the Colosseum.
Over his long artistic career, Master Painter Paternuosto makes skilled use of different types of painting techniques. These include the fascinating encaustic and other less known ancient techniques such as scagliola - an art form dating back  to the Renaissance, but nowadays not widely used, which he used to create works of high artistic quality and rare beauty - Pompeian fresco and art restoration techniques.
Paternuosto’s works can be found both abroad and in Italy, especially in Rome inside  museums, churches, patrician houses and in the homes of well-known Italian political and artistic personalities.
It’s during the 70’s, however, that he focuses his research on encaustic painting,  an art form he remembers from childhood: he was only a child when his father first took him on a trip to the archaeological site of Pompeii and showed him ancient wall paintings done with an ancient technique. He was so fascinated by those paintings, that he swore his father he would try to reproduce that same technique when he would grow up.
Paternuosto’s first encaustic paintings date back to the 80’s. In 1986 he organizes a solo exhibition in one of Rome's most charming areas: Trastevere.
 

MY LUCKY JOURNEY TOWARDS ENCAUSTIC

My lucky journey towards encaustic begins in the Southern Italian region of Molise.

Under the guidance of my first two art teachers, I acquire direct knowledge of painting materials and tools:

I learn how to formulate primers (fatty and lean tints), to prepare plasters and paints with resins, oils and ceruse, as a preliminary step to the preparation and use of binders.
I learn how to make specific brushes using hog bristles or snipe feathers, stencils for repetitive designs, whips (made with ditch reed tops) to mottle walls to give them a faux wood or faux marble appearance.

I learn how to modify a pigment’s tone by using fire, the technique used to obtain some variants of the yellow Siena marble often used inside churches.

I learn how to install false ceilings by building a wooden framework on which to nail canvas or glue plain wallpapers, a perfect solution to level ceilings, ensure a fair insulation and have a nice decoration at the same time.
Binder: the ingredient which adheres the pigment particles to the support - it’s necessary for almost all painting techniques.
Nowadays, people go to fine arts shops to purchase ready-made colors, but they are completely unaware of the binders’ composition.
My masters, be it for economic or technical reasons, used to go to the grocery store to buy the necessary ingredients to prepare a good binder which suited their needs.

Those ingredients were more or less the following: eggs, jelly (fish glue)  soap, milk, garlic, corn meal and rice flour, starch, vinegar, spirits of wine, olive or walnut oil, alum, wax, colophony (Greek pitch) talcum, etc.

In my opinion, all these seemingly simple ingredients make for extraordinary binders.
Today, after the early sound training I received from my old masters, on both a technical and artistic level, thanks to the help of my brother Luciano (painter and restorer) and my two daughters Diana (restorer) and Sabina (painter), and building on my direct knowledge of painting materials, my lucky journey towards encaustic begins.