Artist Plays With Food in His Drawings

“I would like to give smiles when people look at my works.” These words are the professed mission statement of Diego Cusano on his Instagram account and own personal website. One look at his work and I’m sure he’ll have achieved his goal as he has for his many followers on social media. As an artist, Cusano uses collage techniques to bring pencil drawings, still life images, illustrations and graphics together to bring his unique vision of the world to life. He calls himself a fantasy researcher and when you look at his pieces you have to wonder if his fantasies are tainted by his empty stomach, they involve an awful lot of food. That’s right, Diego Cusano is the master of high art food fantasy. With his collage techniques, Cusano builds an aesthetic that alternates from being light and funny to profound and gorgeous. For every pencil-drawn father kissing the pink, ready-to-bloom, tulip stomach of a pregnant woman, there is a person blow drying their head of pasta hair pinched between two chopsticks. He even gives his followers his own take on long-loved classics like a drawn and colored toucan with a real-life image of two tethered bananas for a beak or the paid project for Mortadella Bologna of a cyclist with two full pizzas for wheels. Diego Cusano is a visionary of a fantasy researcher, the perfect mix of imagination that is both beautiful and hilarious. Not to be missed.