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.