Artnotes: Unfolding

 

Here Comes the Sun  Laurie Fox Pessemier  acrylic/watercolor paper 20 x 27.5"   50 x 70cm   375.00

I love winter.  I love its harshness, unpredictability, contrast.   I walk Berlino in the very early morning (well, it’s still dark out) and the sun fights the darkness to emerge -- in the direction of our walk.  It’s different in summer, where the sun just slowly peeks over the hilltops, slowly, warmly.  Winter sun is like light bursting out behind hungry trees. Piazza dei Martiri  Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas   12 x 16"   30 x 40cm   475.00 On Wednesday we stood in an icy fog in the grand Renaissance piazza  (the 3rd largest in Italy) of Carpi, in Emilia Romagna.  It was breathtakingly beautiful, and we were almost the only people there.  Carpi is not so much visited – it is between the blockbuster cities of Bologna and Parma.   I had to drag Blair there kicking and screaming, after having been to the hideous outskirts of the town years ago to look at a car.   But when you arrive at the main square, Carpi opens up like a beautiful flower. Blue and Gold   Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas  12 x 12"  30 x 30cm  375.00 The frescoes I most wanted to see were not open this day.  Wednesday was not the best day to visit, if one wanted to go to museums – things to see are open Thursday through Sunday.  In fact, I was more than happy just to walk around the perimeter of the square, with its delicate Renaissance decoration.  It was among the most pure and lovely architecture I have seen in a long time.  It struck me how Carpi was Renaissance compared to its equally enchanting Medieval neighbor Mantua. House in the Snow   Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas  12 x 12"  30 x 30cm  375.00 We were very well received at the tourist office.  It turned out that the woman working there had studied ceramics in Roccamalatina with our local ceramicist, Sandra, now of Zocca (the next town up the hill).    Sandra sells me clay and fires my work.   The tourism guide let us in to a little room where the “guerriero di Carpi”  (a medieval knight) was uncovered after an earthquake knocked the plaster off a wall.  It whet my appetite to go back and see more. Waiting for Spring  Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas  12 x 12"  30  x 30 cm  375.00 I am amazed how wonderfully life unfolds when we “get out”.  And for me the off-season is best, when there is plenty of time and only the hardy are travelling.   We did make it into a couple of wonderfully decorated churches, but it was colder in them than outside.  We may delay our church painting until the summer.   We packed back into the car and drove back to Roccamalatina.  Satisfied Sign up for Artnotes by contacting me at lfpessemier@gmail.com