Rose in a Vase Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/panel 14 x 12" 34 x 25cm
View from Pieve Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 20 x 32" 50 x 80cm
Church at Pieve de Trebbio Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 18 x 24" 45 x 60cm
House next door with beehives Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 20 x 16" 50 x 40cm
Roses in the Rain Laurie Fox Pessemier 12 x 14" 25 x 34cm
Artnotes: On top of the World
We live on top of
the world here -- not the Alps, but the Apennines. We have so many painting vistas to choose
from, it is hard to pick the best. Even
more difficult is selecting one out of the sun, which is why we just bought a
pavilion style tent, delivered today.
That said, today it
is raining of all things, and despite the tent, we are forced to be indoors,
from where I paint roses growing in the back yard. We have at least a dozen bushes, all
different colors (so Italian) from pink, to red to pale yellow.
On Wednesday, a very sunny day, we drove
up 50 more meters from Rocca Malatina to
Pieve de Trebbio. There's a church
there, various outbuildings, a small cemetery and open space. At four in the afternoon the rays of the sun
are at such an angle, it is a composition of greens, blues and purples across
the valley.
Harika gave her seal
of approval, jumping out of the car and running around in big circles. As we were taking our supplies out of the
trunk, another car pulled up and started to unload.
The alighting woman
was quite beautiful, wearing a rather skimpy garment. Hmm.
The older man took photography equipment from his car. Harika was intrigued, but we kept her near
us as we committed the landscape to canvas.
Blair and I painted
for 90 or so minutes, and the other people disappeared among the
architecture. As I was near the finish
of my canvas, the man asked if he could photograph the woman with me and my
canvas in the background. Shoot on, I
encouraged him.
It turned out he was
a photographer and she was his model. He
is an excellent life model photographer (she kept her filmy dress on next to
me, though). More astonishing than simply
bumping into him and her was that he
spoke English, and had lived in Holland, Pennsylvania for part of his
life. Now he was a photographer, living
in Modena. We traded stories of Paris
and Rocca Malatina, Holland Pennsylvania, and Modena, and then traded business cards.
