When I think about China, I am tenderly drawn to traditional images of well-known Chinese clichés. In fact, when I visited China, I was struck by how well the Chinese people had supplanted their homeland culture in other parts of the world. I mean the typical Chinese restaurant with its dark woody front and red …
I went to Venice with my wife to visit the city with some friends of mine from the States. We stayed for 4 days in the city then we took the car from Venice to Padua to see the Scrovegni Chapel. Afterwards we saw Ravenna, Lake Garda and finished the trip in Milan. The weather …
As usual, I was on the road at day-break in order to arrive at my destination before the traffic. Since we are at the end of the summer Daylight Savings Time, the sun rises quite late so the traffic is already starting at a quarter past six. I went to Piazza Ungheria (Hungary Square) and …
I was looking very carefully at the shadows on the wall of the building across the street. I noticed that the colours in the shadows had their own specific nature. As a painter, I know that shadows can be obtained by mixing the local colour of the object with the appropriate complementary colour. This tends …
Yesterday I went outside to paint after quite a long pause. I’ve been painting indoors from photographs that I took in Berlin. My main objective in the Berlin series is to work as quickly as I can. This prevents me from being precious about the details that I can study from a photograph. It has …
An opportunity arose and I decided to visit Berlin. I had never been there before and the opportunity included a visit to an art fair that takes place every year. In realty, it’s not just one fair but four contemporary art fairs in the same period. The fair called Berliner Liste was particularly interesting to …
A friend of ours let us stay in her country house in exchange for taking care of her plants. The small apartment is near a village called Montevirginio about 50 km from Rome. The weather was exceptionally hot but the ancient walls of the apartment and its likeable location kept the inside cool. There’s no …
(July 25) A new metro line in Rome has been built very close to my neighbourhood. The stations are modern and clean. I chose to paint near of these stations and found my place early in the morning as usual. There were lots of cars, poles and things in my view. There was even a …
First time outdoors after a three-week break. I had to look over my equipment the night before just to make sure nothing was missing. Painting in the early morning reminds me of fishing; you get excited the night before and try to imagine how it’s going to be in the morning. Today was warm already …
I’ve been thinking a lot about drawing lately. I mean the act of drawing and what happens when you try to express yourself in this way. You are left with very little to play with: paper and the tool that makes a mark. You might be able to make some kind of analogy between drawing, …