Four from Catania, Sicily; tourist painting

*

Four from Catania, oil on canvas with coins for scale

Catania is a strinking city- dilapidated, dirty and gorgeous. As I walked from the train station past the seedy harbour area to the fish market where my hostel was, lines from Tom Waits' Tom Traubert's Blues  played in my mind:


"No one speaks English, and everything's broken", or "And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace, And a wound that will never heal."

It's a great place for painting, there's that variety of textures and sensations you get in places with haven't been sterilised for tourists- the mess, the squalor: the wounds unbound - lending you intimacy. The baroque architecture of Catania is fantastic and the city has hills that variety of levels which allows for varied perspectives. And at night the city has a sinister allure.

View near the Garibaldi Gate, oil on card, 10 x 11.5 cm   - available

Catania- view of the city from the south, oil on card, 11.5 x 9.6cm  - available

Catania- opposite the Agora Hostel, oil on card, 9.5 x 11.5 cm - available

 

Catania, Sicily- view near Piazza Curro, oil on card, 12.4 x 9.5 cm  - available

I had been thinking of doing some paintings in London which specifically tackled known tourist sights- Houses of Parliament, Nelsons Column etc- but I think that the idea is poor, because these places so control resposes, denying intimacy and nuanced responses from visitors. They are propogandist, like official portraits lacking personality, and it would be better for me to do a series set in London's non- touristy neighbourhoods, such as Brixton or Battersea, where it is easier to locate one's subjectivity.

*

Paintings from this site are generally available for purchase. Pplease see label "buying art" , below, for details.

Three from Sicily; tourism, photography and plein air painting

 *

 

I took the ferry from Malta to Sicily, staying for a couple of days in spledidly sited former Greek Empire city of Syracuse, where Archimedes lived and which features ruins of some importance.

Much of the city has recently been restored, though the place still has some rough edges.

Three from Sicily (Syracuse and Taormina)

 

 

 

 

Corso Umberto I, oil on card, 13 x 9.6 cm - discarded

Greek Amphitheatre, Syracuse, oil on card, 9.5 x 12.6

I met a charming French-Spanish couple while painting here, at this greek Apmhitheatre, which is quite enormous. Thanks to them for buying me lunch. I hope they find this site.

 

View of Taormino, oil on card 12.6 x 9.5 cm    available

 

 

 

 

Taormino is one of those places that is so touristified that it is quite unpleasant, the entire length of the main street taken up with shops selling souvenirs. The tourist industry has this amazing capacity to destroy the places and cultures that it supposedly celebrates: everything becomes commodified, including aspects of interpersonal relations.

The views  from the town, however, are quite breathtaking.

My picture owes something to Kokoschka, the itinerant Austrian, whose painting journeys might become a model for me, along with Edward Lear and the Scotsman David Roberts.

*

Digital cameras have made photography easy, cheap and fast and I see tourists, including myself, wandering about snapping away, scarely seeing the world save through a lens. Given that images of most places tourists visit, quite probably of superior quality, can be found on the web, their reason for snapping must really more to do with the desire to say "I was here", than to record or understand a place.

In the face of this barrage of fast photo images there is obviously place for slower, more considered meditation on places. Plein air painting provides this.

*

These paintings are for sale- for 100 Brazillian Reals or equivalent in another stable currency (at the time of writing this is roughly 58 US$ or 42 Euros or 36 GB pounds). Post, packing and handling are not included.

More details can be found under the label "buying art", below: please contact me with any enquiries.

 

*