Tower at Vescovia Blair Pessemier Acrylic/linen 14 x 9.5" 35 x 24cm
Umbrella Pines Vescovia Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 8 x 20" 20 x 50cm
Oranges on Blue Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/newspaper 16 x 24 40 x 60cm
Calabrian Oranges Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/newspaper 16 x 24 40 x 60cm
Oranges on Bronze Laurie Fox Pessemier 10 x 24" 25 x 60cm
Blue and Orange Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/paper 8 x 14 20 x 35 cm
Monte Cimone First Snow Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/custom house paper 8 x 14 20 x 35 cm
I have been busy as a bird dog with an American guest here
these past seven days. I forget how easy
it is to speak English, and my lungs feel weak from chatter. I haven’t written a single word all week,
and find myself at Saturday with no artnotes to pick from.
Fortunately, I’ve visited a passel of cities for inspiration: Vignola, Modena, Bologna, Florence and
Orvieto. Each city is distinct. I would have to say Bologna is the city where
I could most easily live (were it not so polluted), and Florence is the most
fun to visit (it’s polluted, too).
It is amazing those two cities are just an hour apart by
train or car; yet so vastly different.
Bologna is full of color, with pink, gold and orange loggia-d streets. It was the intended home of the Catholic
church before the Vatican. At the last
minute that decision was made and the half-finished cathedral gave way to the educational
heart of Italy.
Florence is all Renaissance and square, punctuated with
wildly striped churches of white and green.
Florence was the “business” city, run by the Medici family. So many buildings there make me think of
banks: rusticated ground floors with iron-gated windows; smoother first stories
and refined details on the third; an occasional terrace on top. We
visited Brunelleschi’s dome of the Duomo, delivering a goose-bump inducing
vista both inside and outside that church.
A friend suggested while in Florence, we eat at a restaurant
owned and run by friends of hers, “by Santa Croce, you can’t miss it”. I only had the name, FrancescanoVini, and
believe it or not we found it on a side street (Borgo dei Greci, 7r/Piazze dei Perruzi),
completely by accident. I am terrible at
choosing restaurants, and at the absolute stage of exasperation we walked in
and it was the right place. The charming
family, including the 9-month-old bambina, made us feel utterly at home. Hooray: the best beef in chianti we ever ate, and my
pasta with clams and cherry tomatoes was delicious.
Blair and I rarely eat “out”. Not spending money on dining makes our
bohemian lifestyle possible; plus I love to cook. I was thankful for this very good recommendation.
We had less dining success in
Orvieto, but had, in past, eaten well there, too. Orvieto has a very lovely church built of black
and white stone, and has that elegance found only in the very early
Renaissance. There is something about
the restraint of the early Renaissance I like more than what was to follow –
the church in Orvieto actually has a wooden roof. I like to see Romanesque roots and vestiges
of the medieval.
Today there is snow on Monte
Cimone and snow is predicted to 550 meters (our altitude) for Monday. I am happy to be back in Rocca Malatina, with
its clean air and coffee with friends. On
the way up the hill to home, we passed the stand of a Calabrian selling
oranges, and bought 3 kilos for 5 Euros. We will paint them, make marmalade,
and enjoy the flavor of Italia.
