Italy Landscapes

After a 10-week sojourn throughout Italy, I resurrected my more spontaneous creative self that had been buried for too many years by grief, loss, and pain.  And, as was natural, Florence -- the cradle of Renaissance art -- was the womb for my rebirth.  There, while enveloped by the Tuscan city's beauty and style, both natural and manmade, I participated in a month-long landscape painting workshop at the Florence Academy of Art.  My series of the city's glorious landmarks was executed with the school's more traditional style.  The skills refined here, however, have been a crucial foundation for leaping into other styles, the first of which was the semi-abstracted value work of a seaside setting in Italy's Cinque Terre.     

Renaissance Romance, Florence, Italy

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size: 19.5" X 15.75"

Florence feels dreamy when swathed in a morning mist and nestled between a hilly verdant woodland and the Apennine Mountains. This panorama of the Renaissance city was painted plein-air from atop San Miniato al Monte, near the Piazzale Michelangelo, during five days of blistering 100-degree July heat.  Historical buildings (from left):  Palazzo Vecchio, Battistero, Campanile, and Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo). 

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SOLD - Cypress Lane, Boboli Garden,

Florence, Italy

Medium:  Oil on Canvas

Size:  15.75" X 19.5"

Cool greens and shadows conjure the calm of this famed lane of the gardens behind the Pitti Palace in this plein-air painting created during four days in July furnace-like heat.  But perspectives break the stillness and invigorate the ambiance.  The pathway leads forward and up, narrowing at the horizon, where the sky fans out and upward.  The trees and bushes are enlivened by the luxurious interplay of green hues: forest, olive, moss, lime, electric, red-green, blue-green.  And if we let our imaginations read between the hidden lanes behind the sculptures, sparks fire from those illicit romantic interludes among the nobility centuries ago.

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Detail - Cypress Lane

Tree tops in the bright noon sunlight become a mosaic of greens and blues.  Direct rays electrify the green of the leaves.  They rest on their dark blue shadows.  The powder blue sky peaks through the openings between branches and leaves.  As the color patches coalesce, a velvety quality emerges. 

Falling Water, Arno River,

Florence, Italy

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size:  13.5" X 10"

This plein-air painting of a pearl of a riverbank park brings back to life the richness of the on-site sensual experience.  Hear the wind rustling through the variegated trees.  Savor the sight of the river’s vibrant periwinkle and emerald hues that reflect the colors of the sky and trees above. Feel the silky fields and flowers, rugged brush, and weathered bricks in the natural garden.   All sweep toward the focal point of falling water, rushing, gurgling, foaming.  Extra sensory perception par excellence.

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Detail - Falling Water

Two techniques further energize the water fall as the focal point.  Rushing water slashing diagonally across the mini-staircase of brown stones galvanizes visual tension.  Then the tension is released with the soft lushness of thick white paint at the fall's bottom.     

Painting the Arno River,

Florence, Italy 

Medium:  Oil on Board

Size:  11.75" X 15.75"

Painters like my friend Maureen and myself were drawn to this site for its composition potential.  I went with the flow of lines of energy to unite this piece. Paths stretch forward.  Fields reach upward.  Trees curve inward into a figure eight-shaped frame that zooms in on the bridges and trees in the horizon.  And, of course, “a river runs through it,” to quote author Norman Maclean.

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Detail - Painting the Arno River

Each tree has an individual character.  This tree lived and breathed from regular shifts in the wind and sunlight during plein-air painting.  Gentle waves of air swirled the leaves every which way to expose the trunk and inner branches.  The outer green leaves looked a light lemony yellow under the brightest rays.

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Storm, Vernazza, Italy 

In this value painting, the strong palette strokes applied quickly and spontaneously release the passion and aliveness of a storm -- not to mention my own Italian temperament.  This dark and turbulent interpretation was extrapolated and abstracted from a colorful view of water splashing against large black rocks jutting out of an azure Tyrrhenian Sea off the sun-drenched town of Vernazza, one of five among Italy's northwestern Cinque Terre region.  But this scene could be of any seaside location -- or simply an abstract painting.  Rotate it around and it changes. . .yet still engages.

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