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"