Il Casale Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 15 x 18" 38 46cm
Civita Castellano Blair Pessemier Acryic/canvas 15 x 18" 38 x 46 cm
Fuschia Geranium Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/newspaper 17 x 24" 43 x 61cm
Pansy Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/newspaper 17 x 24" 43 x 61cm
Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/newspaper 17 x 24" 43 x 61cm
Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/newspaper 17 x 24" 43 x 61cm
Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/newspaper 17 x 24" 43 x 61cm
Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/newspaper 17 x 24" 43 x 61cm
Across the Street to Vescovia Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 16 x 24 40 x 60cm
Grape Vines Laurie Fox Pessemier Acryic/canvas 15 x 18" 38 x 46 cm
“If Italy could get its tourism act together, it
would be the most visited country in the world,” a friend expounded over drinks on Friday
night. We all have the best tourist experiences
here. We were recounting to him our
visit to Tarquinia, which externally had all the romance of visiting a series
of cow sheds, but the Etruscan tombs beneath the ground were extraordinary.
We drove to Tarquinia via Viterbo, with friends, and onto
Cerveteri, with a lunch outdoors, all a stone’s through from the Tyrrhenian
Sea. An unpopulated beach, with a couple
of charming Sengalese selling whatever you might need, was a perfect respite
from the hot, sunny necropolis’. Our
guest and I bought flower-lined umbrellas from a Bangladeshi confined to the
restaurant. A perfect day, all within an hour of
here. We dropped our friends off at Fiumicino
airport.
Blair and I enjoy the area, with or without visitors. Yesterday we went to Orte to paint. The sun was in the wrong position. I forget, I admire it from the highway coming
from Florence, which means it is at least after 1PM when I see it. So we pressed on, looking for other painting
sites. On the way, we passed near a
local streetfood truck, serving sausage and broccolini sandwiches, and we
couldn’t resist. In the end, we painted quite close to our own
town.
We visited the peony garden on
Saturday. There were more than 600
varieties of peonies and 200,000 plantings over about 40 acres. We were almost the only car of people there,
because unless you were in the know, you’d never find the place by the directions
on the internet. It claimed to be in
Vitorchiano, near Viterbo, but in fact it was four miles away. The delightful fragrance announced the place. The preponderance of bused-in older folk made
me feel like a teen-ager.
We’ve been sitting on the benches
in Stimigliano, drawing pictures of the locals, something they seem to enjoy as
they sit around rehashing local events.
We visit while drawing (I’ll include some pictures next artnotes). A local, 68 years old, tells us how his son
works in Chicago, USA. “And he says
Americans never stop: they’re always
working, always earning money”.
I guess it all depends where you
grew up.
