Sunday, February 25, 2018

Artnotes: Just the Facts

 Magenta Ranunculas  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/newspaper  17 x 25"  43 x 63 cm

Flower in Mistaken Spring Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/newspaper  25 x 17"  63 x 43cm   
 Ranunculas from the Market Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/newspaper  25 x 17"  63 x 43cm   
 Ranunculas on Turquoise  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/newspaper  17 x 25"  43 x 63 cm   
 ​Fields in Winter  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas 8 x 19.5"   20 x 50cm  

Santuario St Famiano  Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas  27 x 46cm   11 x 18" 

This feels like the longest winter of my life.  Yes, I am warm in the apartment near Rome, but I want to be playing outside.  And now we are facing the icy blast from Siberia:  I planned on it being warmer.  I hope my outdoor painting workshop in the Borghese Gardens next Sunday will be possible.  The show must go on.
I like winter, at first, when the trees display their beautiful limbs senza leaves.  All the mosquitoes die – yippee. There is so much brilliant angular LIGHT.  The sky directly above is unimaginably blue.  At night the stars are fantastic.   But as we drag into February, and I am still painting flowers in the house, or painting from photos, I get cranky.   All this, as Rocca Malatina sits under a near meter of snow.
So, I spend time sorting books in my library.   I find great happiness in alphabetical order:  it is a fact.  I have been thinking about truth, and facts and physical laws.   To watch Richard Feynman explain how drops of water all cling together to make surface tension makes me relax.   I can count on it.
I watched a video this week from the Intercept, where Glen Greenwald and James Risen debate about political allegations and the need for proof.  I respect Glen Greenwald’s sentiment that proof is necessary in journalism – in everything really.  But I’d rather be outside watching the crows.
Everything seems so uncertain at the moment.  We are approaching an election here in Italy next Sunday, the 4th.  I am hoping to paint-through-it.    The former president, Berlusconi, could actually win, even though he is 80-something and cannot serve because of a felony.   Another candidate is just 31 years old.  Everyone is promising the population more money.  The Fascists here are the real thing.  It’s most disconcerting.
Meanwhile, I try to live my life the best way possible.  We picked up another 30 boxes of books in Florence this week.  We hired a man from Nigeria to help us load them all in the station wagon, precariously parked.  Among the books is a guide to Florence architecture.  It is such a beautiful city, I look forward to studying each stone in chiseled, unmoving detail. 


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