Favola

"Favola"

80 x 80 cm

Oil on canvas

2023

Mothers don't have favorite children, right? Painters don't have favorite paintings, no? Every single painting I offer up to the world touches me and is a piece I would hang in the center of my own home forever. That is my rule.

And then there is Favola... this painting is somehow my favorite. Somehow the perfect symphony of light, of life, of all things that grow and blow in the breeze, of every story, every fairytale, every moment I have inhabited my imagination. Favola is an Italian word. Like many Italian words, it rolls off the tongue like a little effortless poem. A melody. It means "Fable" in English, and it encapsulates everything I look for when I step into the studio.

Favola is somehow strangely still mine, and it was the most important painting that carried me through cancer treatment in 2024. My home is bathed in beauty and light. I fill it with energy and my art is everywhere. I chose to place Favola beside my bed, and I gazed into the misty green light and lost myself, lost all suffering, narratives of reality. I stepped inside and was saved, over and over. Art is a mysterious thing. It offers shelter, inspiration, reassurance that beauty still exists, even in the darkest of times.

Favola is all that. I love this painting. Probably the most of them all. I know that when it finds its forever home, it will gift someone with an endless, enduring fable. A haven. A home.

At the time of this writing, Favola is available in my Italy studio.

The sleeping blackbird

"The sleeping blackbird"

100 x 100 cm

Oil on canvas

2024

There are blackbirds in the valley where I live in Italy. They are so plain, seemingly so unremarkable, until they cut loose their sweet song. Here, the blackbirds sing in a cacophony back and forth to one another across the valley. They are a constant reminder of all the life we humans cannot know.

Then one day, in midsummer, the blackbirds stop, usually around a full moon. There is a saying here that they go to sleep when the green is the greenest, to awaken again in the golden fall. It is a mystery.

Like most things.

This is the time of the sleeping blackbird. 

This piece stirs a sense of calm introspection and captures the ethereal interplay of light and shadow, inviting you to lose yourself, just for a moment get lost in a lush green world, still under the moon. Life with a beating heart.

It's designed to bring an atmosphere of peace and contemplative beauty to any space.

At the time of this writing, "The sleeping blackbird" is available in my Italy Studio.

My thoughts flood back to you

"My thoughts flood back to you"

80 x 120 cm

Oil on linen

2025

I wish you could see this painting. Stand there in front of it with no pressure, no place to be, no one calling your name. You are there and time means nothing and your eyes are soft and your gaze is languid and relaxed. And you come in. Come in for a while, spinning in a place of light and water and sun and air.

This place. It is warm. It is musical. It is soft. It loves you.

This painting was inspired by the moment of consciousness in my human body that I feel when I paint. My force flooding back, away from all the outside stuff and noise that mean nothing. To my perfect self.

The title was inspired by a beautiful love song. Painting is always a love story to me. I often listen to love songs as I paint.

An excerpt from "Thoughts flood back to you" by Amble:

Cast that paint out into the rain

Say it's no use anyhow

We are not a tidal wave

More a ripple growing loud

And then I knew

All my thoughts flood back to you

And I knew

All my thoughts flood back to you

On the date of this writing, "My thoughts flood back to you" is available in my Italy Studio.