Scrap tires inspire creativity in European artist

CANNES, France—People find inspiration in different ways. Nicola Rosini di Santi finds his in an unlikely place: a scrap tire yard.

“I seek and dig in the mountains of tires until I find a nugget or gem that will put my imagination running,” said Rosini di Santi, dubbed “Nicola the Tire Painter.”

He said his paintings are contemporary art tuned in with the times. He hopes “it will remain like an imprint and a very precise moment of our time.”

Once he finds tires he wants to use, Rosini di Santi will walk to his car holding the tires close to him because he is already imagining the rhythm of color he will illustrate.

Rosini di Santi was born in Santeramo in Colle, Italy, before his parents immigrated to France, where he attended Ecole Boulle, an advanced public school of fine arts, crafts and applied arts in Paris.

He said he lived in Paris for about 30 years before moving to the south of France, near Cannes, where he displays most of his work.

“My career is a road of creation,” he said in an email interview from his home in France. “So I had to simply follow my artistic soul.”

Rosini di Santi started by drawing, sculpting and creating furniture, with painting coming much later. In any work he does, he searches for emotions in a movement, a shape or in the color of an object.

He found his passion for his pictorial work by browsing through museums—especially the Louvre Museum. That eventually led to designs with scrap tires. He likes to incorporate recycled products in his work, including his bronze sculptures that have included a recycled bronze faucet, crown metal and tubes.

To date, Rosini di Santi said he has crafted nearly 300 tire paintings. The “sculpture of the tire”—the geometric designs—is what brought him to a scrap yard to find tires as a medium on which to work.

As he began to work with scrap tires, he said he thought tire companies had found “anonymous artists to create these designs” in the tire treads because he found them quite artistic, encompassing the spirit of an artist. Rosini di Santi selects his tires because he has seen something in them that no one else has.

Some tires surprise him more than others.

“I discovered a world of calculations, gum streaks, curves,” he said, that could create “an infinite world of possibilities to redefine painting.”

Rosini di Santi's paintings are on display mostly in Cannes, but he has sold pieces around the world to private collections.

In the future, he would like to create on a larger format using an industrial or off-the-road tire to create art installations. He also noted that through his research, he has seen a number of tire recycling ideas and was “delighted for the environment,” because although he does recycle some scrap tires, he could not save them all through his “mode of expression.”

“Art embodies a vision of the world,” he said. “It can change the look we have on our daily lives and our existence.”