The end of Summer

Here is the finished painting after a few changes in composition and color.
Title "The end of Summer" oil on canvas size 30x30"

Work in progress.

A 30x30" oil on canvas of a country road. No title yet, I will think of a title when the painting is finished. Any suggestions?

On the way to Florence

One of the last paintings resulting from photo references and sketches taken on my last Tuscany trip. I will be leaving soon for Italy to gather new material for my paintings plus enjoy the food, the wine and the people. I need these annual trips to Italy to refresh my art and my spirit! I will be leaving soon and I will spend about 12 days in Tuscany and 12 days in Sicily hoping the weather will be warm enough (especially in Sicily) to produce some plein air paintings.
"On the way to Florence" oil on canvas size 20x24".
Sold November 7, 2007 by Buckland Southerst Gallery, West vancouver.

Early morning in the Olive grove

This is one of my favorite and recurrent images. A path through trees with long shadows that happen only in early mornings or late afternoons.
This painting is 30x30" one of the largest sizes I have ever painted. Most of it is painted using a #4 bristle flat brush, a small brush for such a large painting!
I worked on this piece in stages waiting for the paint to dry before applying other layers of color. Unusual for me an "alla prima" painter, an impatient and impulsive painter.
I think this painting is quite successful. I like the light in it and the variation in the large areas of color.I like the trees foliage and the impressionistic foreground. I am also happy with the shape on the main tree trunk. I think it gives the piece a certain tension and expressive quality.
This painting is on display at Buckland Southerst Gallery , West Vancouver.


Your comments and criticism are welcome!
Sold October 2007 at Buckland Southerst Gallery, West Vancouver.

Paesaggio con Cipresso ( Landscape with Cypress tree)

This painting stems from sketches and photos done in my last trip to Tuscany. A field of Poppies and a lone Cypress trees in the countryside near Siena.
I am going back soon and I will sketch again and take hundreds of photos of my beloved Tuscany.

Paesaggio con Cipresso is a large 24x30" oil on canvas. It can be viewed/purchased at Buckland Southerst Gallery, Vancouver, BC.

Just an update: this painting was just sold September 23rd, after only 5 days since I brought to the gallery. I am working on a 30x30" oil painting of trees now, it should be finished in couple of days. I will post it here of course!

Early morning in the vineyard

I prefer to travel to Tuscany in Spring or Fall. Tuscan Summers are very hot and tourists crowd even the smallest villages. Springs have the sweetest scents and Falls the most handsome colors.I will go back in a couple of months, in the middle of October, a bit later than last year, and hopefully there will still be fresh porcini in the markets.
This painting I did with references I took last year in the coutryside near Siena ( don't quite remember the name of the place).
"Early morning in the vineyard" 18x18" oil on canvas.

Summer at Greve

I paint everyday. There are days when I say to myself "today I will do something different". It could be something as simple as using a new color, or choosing a different subject or a pick up different size brush. I am not the kind of painter that uses a brush for every color. Although I have a few hundreds brushes all ready and willing, I end up using a couple of brushes from beginning to end, maybe three, when I want to feel fancy. Drawing being more familiar to me that painting I never got used to switching brushes like many artists do. I take a "stick" dip it in color and ..go. Consequently the kind of brush I use affects the look of the piece as much as color and composition do.
For this painting choose a small stiff brush (size#4 quite stiff) that I would not normally use in a painting this size. I liked the intricacy of the vegetation and wanted to show it as the main subject of the painting.

"Summer at Greve, Tuscany" oil on canvas size 16x20".

A painting of Olive Trees

I have been painting mostly small pieces, I guess they can be called studies. At the gallery request I am making an effort to paint larger. This piece is 24x30"...a huge expanse of canvas for someone used to paint 12x16" and smaller. A scary espanse of canvas to tell you the truth, very intimidating. How to fill this space without going too "detaily" and without making a mess of colors and shapes? First, use a large brush I told myself. Second take care of the composition, the negative spaces, the contrast. Start sketchy at first ( still talking to myself here) and don't worry, it's only paint. Then I decided that the most important thing was to paint a small version of it, a study. Of course this is nothing new. Most artists paint studies of their larger work, but for me , an "alla prima" painter, this was a novel experience. So I decided to paint trees. Because I love trees I have hundreds of reference images. Tuscan olive trees and cypresses, orange and lemon trees, Sicilian palms. I could choose from apple trees in bloom, giant oaks, towering hemlocks, chestnut trees...I decided for Tuscan Olive trees for the way they are pruned. Tall and open in the middle, with light showing through their branches so the sky color would be mix with the color of the foliage. Of course it also needed a pathway and the long shadows of a late summer day. So I have been working off and on at this painting for over a week and then it sat almost finished for another week. I kept looking at it not very convinced it was finished. I am a deadline addict ( the gallery was waiting for this painting) and it takes fire under my you know what for me to take decisive action. The painting was not done, it needed more work, more strokes, more contrast, more complexity. The day before my appointment with the gallery I took it off the wall and went at it furiously for hours. It worked. I was satisfied with it. It was finished. Here it is.

On the way to Siena

Driving from Florence to Siena in a small red car with my friend Camilla (she was the driver, a fast one, a real Italian) I screamed "stop the caaaaar!" In front of us was the most perfect Cypress lined road, the kind of place I have imagined for a long time and I was eager to immortalize in a painting. I always carry both my sketchbook and my camera. I need both as the pen gets what the camera doesn't. It was early morning and the trees projected long shadows on the gravelly road. Blue sky with puffy clouds, the perfect day and a perfect image of Tuscany.
Back in my studio a month or so later I produced this painting " a day with Camilla"
Oil on canvas size 20x24"

Summer in Tuscany

I rarely spend Summers in Tuscany. From June to the end of August Florence is the hottest city in Italy along with Bologna. I have been living in Vancouver, Canada for the last 30 years or so, so the heat of Tuscan Summers is not something I am used to. I usually go to Tuscany in the middle September, or sometimes in April, end of May at the latest. Tuscan Summers remain in my childhood memory: time at the beach in Marina di Pisa with my cousin Silvia, mushrooms hunting with grandma late august in the Pineta. September is still Summer enough for me. The sun is still hot and the light still intense. Sunflowers are past their prime but still colorful.
This painting is of a field near Siena, at the end of September.
Oil on canvas size 24x30" .
It can be seen and purchased at Buckland Southerst Gallery in Vancouver in a few days.

An artsy dinner

Mary and Richard are the owners of gallery that has represented my work for the last 9 years. They come to my home/studio two or three times a year, have an italian dinner, chat about art and food and leave with a few of my new pieces.
Richard is vegetarian but eats eggs and dairy so a Spanish frittata is what I do for him while the rest of the company feast on prawns. Since penne with porcini was the fist course I knew he would be well fed by the time we got to the salad and the dessert. He is very tall and lanky with a dry sense of humor and. Mary is blonde and bubbly, attractive tall english woman, with an easy infectuous laugh and a great head for business. They are great people, am I lucky to have timidly approached them nine years ago with my first small pastel landscapes and lucky that they saw some sort of potential in me. They have supported and guided me over the years, encouraged my transition to oils and more recently my attempts at producing larger sizes. I tend to be overcritical of my work. Comparing my modest accomplishements to Cezanne's does not produce self confidence...Every piece is a struggle, frustration is the feeling that most often accompanies the painting process. But I make progress, slowly but securely, and that keeps me painting. Keeps me going.

In praise of small paintings

Small paintings are charming, intimate, unobtrusive, flexible....They can be placed on a piece furniture, small wall, bookcase. The can form interesting compositions on a large wall mixed with different size paintings. They can be collected, moved around, given as gifts. Since they are usually less expensive than large paintings, they can be purchased for pleasure and not necessaarily for investment. Being raised in Italy I am used to walls with collections of paintings, different subjects, sizes, colors, frames. I don't understand "one wall one painting". The houses of my youth had large numbers of small paintings: some were bought as souvenirs, some received as gifts, some were family heirlooms, and there was always a friend or a relative who was an artist. My grandmother used to paint in oils. I only have one of her small paintings: a peasant girl walking on a country road in a style reminiscent of Corot. Since grandma was not a "famous" artists her paintings were given away and not taken into consideration. I know now that she was a pretty good painter who went to the Art Accademy but never took herself nor her art very seriously. In those day taking oneself seriously was considered unbecoming especially for women.

I paint a lot of small paintings. They can be studies for larger paintings, plein air notations or just a way of keeping my painting juices flowing. Here is a small landscape painted a few days ago. It's an oil on panel size 5x7"

This small house

Mary, the owner of the gallery where I show my work, suggested we sell our house and move near her so she can watch my painting progress. In the last couple of years house prices in downtown Vancouver have doubled in value so I could sell my home at a nice profit and move to West Vancouver near Mary. A good proposition. Mary and her partner Richard are great friends and wonderful people. They also love my cooking ...hmmm, I think her proposition may have an ulterior motive....

We have been living in this small house in the heart of the city for 30 years. This is the only house our daugher has known. We have planted a garden, painted walls, installed cotto tiles, extended decks, create new spaces ( my studio in one of those). There is a small 9x7' shed called "Casa Fiorita" under the old apple tree. That's Francesca's house, built by her dad when she was 5 years old. It has leaded glass windows and flower boxes. Francesca does not play in it anymore but is a great place for occasional summer afternoons naps.This house has changed, expanded, grown with us. Thirty years of memories are difficult to let go of especially when years past are many more than years to come.We are not movers, we are settlers.

Olive trees and Cypresses

I finished this painting a few days ago. I return to this image fairly often and I painted it many times at different hours of the day. A pathway through olive trees, a sunny day in Summer. Those are Tuscan Olives taller than Sicilian ones, trimmed in the middle so the sun reaches all parts of the tree. I like their strange shape, almost human, reaching toward the sky , towering along the Cipresses. Being born I Tuscany and raised in Sicily I have a special love for Olive trees, common to both regions. Tuscan oil is refined and fruity, Sicilian oil is strong, green and earthy.
Tuscany is soft and graceful, Sicily is harsh and wild. I lived in both regions and love the both in different way and for different reasons.

Oil on canvas 20x24". This painting can be seen at Buckland Southerst Gallery , Vancouver toward the middle of May.

Capturing the moment

In a recently received comment there is the phrase " your paintings are so alive". It made me think. Are my paintings alive? and if so why? It could be because when in Italy I feel alive, maybe because I am on vacation, rested and ready to appreciate my surroundings, or because places I see are seen for the first, and very often last, time. Thus my paintings are an effort of holding on to those places, to keep them alive in my memory, to hold on and grab that fleeting experience. They are usually streets, fields and farms where I would like to stay, linger, come back time and time again. Places where I would like to live, balconies where I would like to water my geraniums, orchards where I would like to stay and wait for the ripening of the olives, oranges and lemons. I would like to be a resident of those small towns, walk the cobbled streets, chat with the grocer and the pharmacist, shop in the local market every morning and walk home with vegetables, meat and bread for that day meal. I know the life, when was young and, living in a small town Sicily. Supermarkets did not exist. Bread was bought every day, as was meat or fish, vegetable and fruit. Going shopping every day was also a social experience. Talking with the vendors, meeting people in the streets and stopping to chat, each person with a bag full of groceries. Maybe a small snack on the vay home, a cappuccino and a pastry, in the bar full of people and noise, with the strong smell of coffee wafting in the air. I felt safe, loved and cared for by a whole community. Small towns in Italy still preserve this way of life, the slow steady pace and the sense of living among people, harmoniously sharing your life with others. Italy now is a life that seems forgotten until I go back and those memories return. It could be that my paintings are "alive" because in them I put some of this nostalgia, this longing, and the desire that you, the viewer, understand and share some of these feelings.

"The long road" Oil on panel size 12x16" Sold at the opening of my show at Buckland Southerst gallery, Vancouver.

Primavera (Springtime)

I have a problem with Spring: the air so lovely, garden fragrant with daffodils and apple blossoms, morning dew on the grass. Every little leaf, weed, gem, rising to meet the light, to grow and eventually trasform the garden with color and life. My problem is that I would like to sit on the bench and stay there for hours looking at my garden. But I have work to do, paintings to paint, dinners to cook, dogs to walk, friends to visit ( not very often I am sorry to say). I can't sit in the garden too as much as I would like. So that's my problem with Spring: a joy that has to be savoured just a little bit. Moments that have to be snatched here and there: maybe this is good, maybe those moments are more intense because they are short. Like all good things in life, they are fleeting, but the memory remains, and the joy of it.

Sun in the vineyard

Wandering in the countryside near Siena you see rows of vineyards laden with purple grapes, leaves fading to yellow and copper.This painting is the result of a trip I took last September with my good friend Camilla, a great lady and, like most Italians, a scary driver. We came back alive and had a great time. A long walk among the vineyards was followed by a lunch in a trattoria in Montepulciano where we had fettuccine with Porcini mushrooms and a glass of red wine.

Oil on canvas size 16x20".

Small paintings

I love small paintings. They are usually studies for larger paintings or just a creative way to rest when I have been struggling with a large piece.
Here is one I just finished: Oil on MDF panel size 6x6"

Tuscany

Finished this one today. One of my largest paintings to date. It's a view of Tuscany, the countryside near San Gimignano.
Oil on canvas size 24x30".

Wheatfield and poppies near the sea

I have been painting with good results lately. The strokes seem to be more energetic and confident. My palette has become more intense. I long for Summer.
Oil on canvas size 16x20.

July in the Olive grove

Hot hot hot...Summer in Sicily.
Oil on canvas size 16x20"

The Sicilian garden

This is a magic place for me, raised in Sicily since I was two years old. A place I come back to every year to bask in the sun and enjoy the rugged beauty of this wonderful island. This small garden orchard belongs to my sister in law, Adelaide. Calla Lilies are my favorite flower. Here they thrive majestically raising their white cups among the luscious almost leathery leaves.
This painting is a 16x20" oil on canvas.

Canadian Meadow in Spring

This is an image I glimpsed from the car while driving to Qualicum Beach, Vancouver Island. I was a passenger so I could snap a photo. The print is blurred but still retains the colors and magic of the sun setting on the meadow.
I loved painting this piece. Oil on canvas size 16x20"