Painting in Italy
I’ll admit, the life of a painter can be tough. Get up, have some strong coffee, an Italian pastry and a fresh peach. Go out an find a beautiful spot to set up and paint all morning. Stop for a delicious lunch of freshly grilled Branzini and pasta stuffed with ricotta and eggplant. Go back to the hotel for a nap. Then get up around 4 pm, find another great scene to paint until the sun drifts down into the lagoon. Meet artist friends for a delicious dinner with the house red wine and spaghetti bolognese. Talk about the day, laugh a lot. Maybe stop for a double gelato cone (pistachio and stracchiatelli) as you stroll down Corso del Popolo, greeting your new Italian friends and their bambinos on the way home.
Get your gear ready for another glorious day. Wash out a few things. Go to sleep.
Repeato.
I just got back from Chioggia, Italy, which is a little fishing village on a lagoon about 25 miles south of Venice. My talented artist friend, Joan LaRue, called me about this trip over a year ago. She’d been reading about the wonderful California impressionist, Edgar Alwin Payne, and found out that one of his favorite places to paint was in Chioggia in the early 1900’s. If you Google his paintings, you’ll see the vibrantly painted, orange sailed boats that are unique to this area. The sails are called “lateens” and the boats have flat bottoms because of the shallow lagoon. Joan invited me, Jean Perry and Kenn Backhaus--great plein air artists and friends--to travel with her for 2 weeks to rediscover the boats, canales and beauty of this italian town. A student of Kenn’s, lovely lady from New York, Marla Speer, was brave enough to join us for a while.
We were welcomed by the family who owned the small hotel we stayed in and by the “queen” who held court among 7 women and one silent man (her husband) each evening at the same table on the promenade. We painted the boats of proud, hard working fisherman (Enrico, Jimmy and more). Claudia, a very elegant lady with a rusty old bike and an embroidered cardigan, stopped by as I painted along the canale and insisted that I take the bags of paints and vintage canvas she had apparently been saving for me since the 1950s. English was not readily available, but we all had a fine time without it.
Here are just a few of the images and photos from the trip and I’ll have about 15 of my paintings on this site within a day or two. Don’t be surprised if I don’t answer the phone. I’ll be back in Italy, if only in my studio, marveling at my fortunate artist’s life.
I’d love your feedback and be sure to email me if you need the directions to Chioggia.
Ciao
P.S. I was looking for a magazine at one of 2 kiosks on the grand promenade one day and noticed called “Plein Air”--the logo and masthead looked just like our American version. It was shrink wrapped, in Italian of course, and a special 2 for one issue. I was delighted until I got back to the hotel and opened it, only to find that “Plein Air” in Italian means “camping.” Ask me anything you want to know about RVs and campsites in Europe and Iʼll refer you to the proper page!
