"Matilde Marcolli describes how she came to mathematics influenced by her parents’ involvement in Italian contemporary art. The abstract art of her father and the conceptual art of her mother, together with atonal twentieth-century music, share with mathematics an appreciation of abstract structures. Her own art includes painting, where surrealism allows her to express contrasts inherent in the practice of mathematical research and to explore the inner world of patient, difficult, and painful hard work and also the bullying and “culture of cruelty” within the mathematics community. ... Besides painting, Marcolli is also a writer in many forms, including science fiction, short stories, poetry, and a theater play."