Ponte Sisto, Rome, framed; Artists Support Pledge

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Ponte Sisto, Rome, oil on card, 12 x 14 cm  FRAMED  AVAILABLE 

This was framed for the Society of Scottish Artists and for some reason never shown here. 

This painting is for sale- it is available as part of the Artists Support Pledge Scheme,  which is on Instagram. This scheme is as follows:

ARTIST SUPPORT PLEDGE

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many artists have found themselves without work, teaching, technical support and gallery work. Exhibitions and sales have disappeared. In an attempt to help alleviate some of this stress I have instigated the ARTIST SUPPORT PLEDGE #artistsupportpledge

The concept is a simple one. Artists post images of their work, on Instigram which they are willing to sell for no more than £200 each (not including shipping). Anyone can buy the work. Every time an artist reaches £1000 of sales, they pledge to spend £200 on another artist/s work.

To make a pledge, post your work with the #artistsupportpledge and follow the # to see everyone else's work. Keep updated on new opportunities and announcements @artistsupportpledge Repost and tell your friends, colleagues and collectors. Let generosity be infectious.

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To Rome With Love (2012): review 2/10

The stories of various characters in Rome, including a young architect and his older correspondent, a music producer and and opera singer played by Benigni.

It feels as if Allen made up this film as he went along, trusting to fate or depending on cliche to guide him. The pacing is awful, the jokes sink.  Allen himself is irritating, as is Benigni and one leaves the film grateful for the end.

The film fails to celebrate Rome, or even American presumptions about it, as Allen's previous Parisian film managed to do.

Painting in Rome: from the parks and around the railway station

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From v. di Villa Medici, Rome, oil on card, 14 / 11.2 cm  - available

Rome, West from the Garibaldi monument, oil on card, 12 / 15 cm

Parkland in Rome, oil on card, 11.5 / 10 cm - - available

 Temple, Villa Borghese Park, Rome, oil on card, 12.5 x 13 cm temple

Rome is a pretty great painting city, with architecture whose insistence is sometimes oppressive: seeking respite from this I went along the river and painted the bridges. And I also went to the wonderful parks.

I started to explore the area near the station too. Immediately outside the station is, of course largely devoted to tourism, but move slightly further south and it quickly, magnificently, changes.

There, pitiful shop window displays showing drab and ugly clothes such as a selection of beige underpants of various sizes, each pair strangely stretched in a peculiarly unflattering holder, or some nasty shoes, the dirty take away restaurants and their aging shop signs, and then the men, often immigrants, in short leather jackets simply standing around smoking or sometimes using mobile phones, and the trams and vast nineteenth century blocks in scuffed pastel colours combined to make me feel an incredible nostalgia for some generalised, seedy. ex-communist city in the nineties, St Petersburg, or Warsaw. 

Also, there are non-Italian restaurants there too: something to be grateful for if the unimaginativeness of Italian cuisine starts to pall.

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Painting in Rome : buildings

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St Peters, Rome, oil on card, 13.5 / 16 cm    SOLD

Behind the Parthenon, Rome, oil on card, 10.5 / 13.7 cm unavailable

I'd had the idea of tackling more of the famous buildings but when I got to them felt disagreeable, the declamatory style of architecture and insistent presence of mass tourism combining to persuade me to so see refuge in Rome's wonderful parks and gardens- of which more tomorrow.

This touches on the way that tourism has the effect of so often destroying what it purports to celebrate, ones the sense of private discovery is lost among the hordes, to which I, of course, contribute, while hypocritically deriding.

The value of art is in the revealing of secrets, a butterfly chase: the skill is to capture and preserve an elusive emotion in your aesthetic net. The next major trip is Egypt- almost equally scrutinised, alas.

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Painting in Rome: bridges

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Ponte Sisto, Rome, oil on card, 12 / 14 cm   

Ponte Sant' Angelo, oil on card, 14.1 / 18.8 cm - unavailable

 Ponte Principe Amedeo di Savoia, Rome, oil on card, 13.8 / 8 cm  unavailable

 Ponte Cavour, Rome, oil on card, 14 / 16 cm  available

Ponte Margherita, Rome- the lonely cyclist, oil on card, 18 / 16 cm  SOLD

Ponte Pietro Nenni, Rome, oil on card, 12 / 7 cm  - available

 When I was last in Rome, two years ago, I painted the Pietro Nenni Bridge, and I wanted this time again to paint the bridges. I pursued this, semi systematically. The bridges offer a respite from the intense tourism of other places.

I was in Rome in two short bursts, at the start and end of a wider Italian trip. The weather was more or less perfect, though I'd have been happier with something more sharply contrasting to Brazil's perpetual summer, something more surely autumnal. 

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29 from Italy

29 from Italy

Absent are four pictures which were sent to Scotland to, perhaps, be sold there.

It's not a bad haul: somehow not quite what I expected to produce, for good or ill.

 I will work more and more in the larger sizes in future.

Over the next few days I'll write more about the specific pictures and places.

Rome

I had a delightful idea, to lift me from the torpor which is Brasil- go to Rome!

I often think of places to go, but none has lent me that instantaneous sense of delight that I need to get organised.

Perhaps I can fly there, visit some other cities too, Naples again, and the Amalfi coast, even cross to the Adriatic side and see Lecce.

I was in Rome less than a year ago, but not for long enough, and felt my work there was not as good as it should have been. But I also I felt that delerium that one feels on encountering a beautiful person too briefly.

But when I say in the car today, a devil visited me, and whispered to my torpor, telling me how the second meetings are too laden with expectations and invariably issue disappointment.

Oh go back to hell where you belong!

Nine photos celebrating the wonderful interior of Zaha Hadid's Maxxi gallery, in Rome

These photos are of the entrance area; the galleries themselves are less interesting.

Rome

Rome- Piazza Venezia, oil on card, 14 x 9.6 cm

This is the last picture from my recent travels.  It doesn't quite sit stylistically with the rest.

Two from Rome

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Ponte Pietro Nenni, Rome, oil on card, 12 x 7 cm

Rome in Autumn is very beautiful.

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