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"