Friday, December 11, 2009

New in the shop this week:This painting was inspired by the Christmas tree we used to have when I was a child. It was a simple tree - no glitter or glitz, no tinsel and just a few select ornaments collected from countries around the world. My parents would place it every year in a large, heavy earthenware pot which would then be filled with and surrounded by the smooth white river stones that my mother had collected in the tails of her shirt (I can still remember the way she would stroke them meditatively with her thumb while she talked). It was not a tree like any other in that decade, but it was my own personal kind of magic, and I would spend hours crouched beneath the fragrant boughs, dreaming of places far away.
This painting was inspired by a small girl I saw playing in the honey-and-cypress-scented hillsides of Tuscany while on one of my sketching walkabouts near the village of Vagliagli.

This was originally sketched on site from a garden overlooking the rooftops of Rome. Rome is one of my favorite places on earth, with its deep layers of history and purely magical light. I spent hours walking its streets and plazas up and down, back and forth - sketching its rooftops and fountains, alleyways and stray dogs, its layers of ancient history emerging through the crumbling earth into the present.

3 comments:

  1. I really appreciate you writing down this extra information, helps them to come alive. That second one reminds me of myself when young for some reason.
    DJ

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  2. I loved reading these things about you. I'm an introvert, too. People never believe me when I say that because I am comfortable talking in front of crowds and spend a lot of time doing just that, but they don't understand that crowds and stages can feel quite safe to an introvert. Plus, artists and writers have to be introverts, or we'd never get a thing done!

    I like lattes (even though they give me a tummy ache) and espressos, both, but I love that you are so firmly set against lattes. Shows conviction.

    xo Gigi

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  3. Really love this painting of the girl with the red ball (all three are lovely) and the story of the simple but still enchanting christmas tree- with stones at her feet.

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