Breathe

Breathe

100 x 160 cm oil on canvas

2020

"Breathe" is a revelation.

Sometimes when I am creating I get hopelessly attached to the outcome. Painting is not a process oriented on a goal. Painting (for me) is a state of mind, letting go of expectations and finding flow. It is incredibly liberating and also sometimes incredibly scary. It involves truly giving in.

This painting did not look at all like this when I conceived it. It was a burnt sienna hued, deep perspective, spacious view of what felt like a canyon. It was stuck, so stuck, because I had created a beautiful moving passage in the central part of the painting, and my fear of ruining it had paralyzed me as I tried to finish the rest of the canvas. I learned the "do not covet" rule so many years ago in art school. I coined the term and it keeps me on track... if I begin to covet any part of my work, a color, a brushstroke, a line, and then tiptoe around it for fearing of losing it, everything else falls apart. Hard. A metaphor for life.

So on that day when I realized I had fallen in the coveting trap, I turned around, walked outside and watched the sky and watered the flowers, and told myself to breathe and let go.

This painting is what happened next.

This is one of my finest works. It stands vertical and calls upon no landscape other than its own. Vertical paintings are for true art lovers, I think. It literally dances on the wall. It is now mounted at the bottom of a staircase and beckons you to sit on the top stairs and behold it. It changes with the light and time of day and your mood, and brings infinite moments for contemplation. It is serene. Frolicking. Wide open.

At the time of this writing, "Breathe" is available for collection in my Italy studio.

Can I come home for the summer?

Can I come home for the summer?

120 x 80 cm Acrylic, oil and pastels on canvas

2021

"Can I come home for the summer?" is a painting inspired by my yearning for home, a home in the earth and connection to place, a home I am searching for, a home full of green living things and water and dirt and birdsong.

I made this painting at a time in life when I feel an overwhelming desire to plant roots in the natural world, to live on a piece of land and pass the seasons and watch what I cultivate bloom and grow and die and come back again.

It is a blissful, serene, deep, long sigh of relief in a painting. I now have it hanging on my bedroom wall until it finds a forever home. It is my last sight when I fall asleep and the first when I awake, and it never fails to take me to a softer space in my mind and heart, a simple, serene space with a soft breeze and warm sky.

As I write this, "Can I come home for the summer?" is available for collection in my Italy studio.

La Rosa

La Rosa, oil on canvas 150 x 150 cm

La Rosa is a painting that holds deep meaning for me. La Rosa was made in Italy many years ago, when I had finally found a space to create in after years of life pulling me around by the neck on a wild uncontrollable ride. I had been an expat in Italy for about 10 years, unintentionally reinventing myself... the wife, the mother, the Italian, living on the top of a mountain in the Alps, looking around dazed and confused much of the time.

La Rosa was the first of a series of paintings I made when I found that empty room in an old, old house, with a big fireplace and windows looking out onto a courtyard grown over with jasmine. La Rosa happened when I finally gave in and let go of my need to have any idea what I was doing (a true painter's revelation... letting go and creating with no expectations, no coveted outcome, no reins).

La Rosa was the painting that caught the eye of the man who would become my curator many years later, when he saw it hanging on the wall of that room in the old house that belonged to his distant relative.

La Rosa was a painting I decided not to sell, even though I had many offers, because I gifted it to my mother. She cherished it and always had it within her most intimate realm, her bedroom. She slept with la Rosa and I like to imagine it inhabited her dreams.

La Rosa is dedicated to her.

La Rosa is not available for collection.