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.

A suburban street, Santa Monica; Italy

 A suburban street, oil on card, 12 / 14 cm  NOT FOR SALE

I have bought myself a little tablet and am playing around with it. I think the camera is just about good enough to mean I can leave the conventional digital at home, and can post images as I go along. Typing on the tablet is fiddly, but it's fine for short entries.

I fly to Italy in a few days time- thank God, as I need fresh ideas: Rome, Puglia, Orvieto, perhaps Lucca, a rough diagonal crossing from Southeast to Northwest.

 Perhaps too much is resting in my mind on the trip- a disadvantage of planning much in advance being that one tends to overload a journey with expectations.

Two square still lives

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 Bananas, oil on card 13/ 13 cm - unavailable

Painted patiently in phases, and aiming for a much more textured effect. I'm hoping I can apply this to landscapes somehow.

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I'm driving down to Gramado and Canela tomorrow. All being well I should be about to do some work there, and along the way.

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Gerberas

Gerberas, oil on card, 14 / 13 cm - unavailable

After several days of hapless work, finally I arrive with something I like.

 Such passages of work, or non work, more accurately, are tiresome, and its sometimes simply better to abandon work for a few days, and hang up the gone fishing sign. But more often it's wiser to hack through, if only for the education it brings, and to maintain ones discipline- a value in itself, I am increasingly prone to understand.