more from the white night

More photos from yesterday (and comments added to last night's post below)
or, more correctly, the flavours of autumn and endless day (white night, when it doesn't get dark).
This was a very large group, one of at least four providers of live music. A band was set up at either end of the street and itinerant groups and musicians wandered between them.
Most were dressed in traditional costume with the distinctive leather shoes of Ciociaria.
Later in the evening a huge crowd gathered around a part of this group as they seemed to engage in a theatre sports type of sing-off. Three of the singers tried to out-sing one another in a tit-for-tat song. Occasionally I heard murmers of "he's won" yet still the competition went on. The lyrics became more outrageous, but as they were in dialect I understood only a quarter of it. That might have been lucky, as the ladies in the crowd were covering their faces and looking shocked while trying to stifle their laughter. The local men occasionally looked across to see how this foreigner might be reacting, but I was able to look quite innocent as I truly hadn't heard this language before!

And below, the reward for beautiful dancing? The "light on his feet" musician quickly hopped back up onto the stage and the lovely dancer continued the next dance with her female companions.
Some musicians are simply too fast to photograph, but the I think that the effect is a work of art. (Note the white coffee pot on a stick in the background - apparently disjointed in this photo, but it wasn't - that is a percussion instrument).
And when is a carved pumpkin not a jack-o-lantern? When it too observes the "bella figura" that is Italy!

Today I am grateful for community.

white night

When is a railway station not a station? When it becomes party central, of course. Captions tomorrow, maybe. Buonanotte :-)

 

Apparently all the food was organically grown and prepared to traditional recipes, a real taste of the region (but I had eaten dinner before deciding to venture out).

 

Trains on one side of the station, a wood-fired oven on the other. Nothing unusual about that in this town!

 

 

Now that's what you call a good sized BBQ, and the fire behind was keeping up the supply of hot embers over the 8 or 9 hours of the festival.

 

 

The instruments were just gorgeous, each one an amazing creation. They hardly stayed still long enough to be photographed though.

 

 

And then there was dancing, with kids in the middle and a watching crowd about 6 people deep (luckily I am quite tall in this town!) This particular dance is a delightfully flirtatious one with a scarf - the ladies tease and run away, and the man circles around, coming close, pulling back, trying again (like peacocks really), not touching her until the last note is played, and they he is likely to earn a huge hug and a kiss for his efforts. One of the band players danced with the lady with the white scarf and it was such a beautiful display to watch. Light on their feet, both knowing the dance so well. Apologies for photo quality, I didn't want to use the flash and break the moment and I was watching from well back in the crowd.

 

 

 

 

The clown looked so sad, watching life going by...

 

 

and one of my favourite instruments, the pot and spray unit. The player was a tall man and the shiny pot could be seen well down the street, the lid popping up and down to the beat. Another, very hard to catch on camera, was a coffee perc...

Gotta love it!

to blog or not?

I didn't paint today. It was one of those days where the weight of the world was closing in on me. The only thing to do then is to shift furniture. I'm good at that! But this house has stairs, so there is an up-ended couch in the passageway making it a little awkward for me to get to the bathroom... a good reminder to hold in those stomach muscles!

Anyway, I now have my studio much closer to how I would like it. There is room to breathe in it again. The compromise today was to surrender the lovely display shelves - that I see when I open the door - to make some kind of office area. No pretty display of brushes and small works, just boxes, books and the computer. But hopefully this will keep my work spaces job specific and I might get some order (and therefore less stress) at last.

This evening a neighbour called in and I showed her my new paintings. She happily chatted, describing them as in the naive genre. That surprised me, but it is a label I don't mind, when I think it through. If that means that the works are coming from my inner child, I hope that they appeal to the inner child of future clients. Certainly the stylised trees in their present form are naive. Food for thought! Her preference, however, was for the original commissioned work, the first of the series.

Same neighbour (she lives in Rome so is only here occasionally) hadn't been into my house before so I showed her around. Opened the door into the cantina... strange smell. That's odd, not a bad smell, just not a fresh one. She admired the (seemingly wooden) floor tiles, and I went to get a sample one from where it hides under the table. I leave it there because people are fascinated by the floor, first thinking it is timber. The carpet under the table was sodden! That's what the smell was. All that wonderful rain had seeped through the wall somehow, formed a river, and run straight to the carpet. The floor had dried, and only a slight tell-tale mark showed where the river had been. Oh dear, so the lake problem in downpours hasn't gone away.

Daylight saving ends tonight, so I can sleep in. Ha! I can sleep in any day, I don't do "alarm clocks" unless there are trains and planes to catch!

It was a "White Night" tonight, in fact it still is. Shops are open until 3.30am, musicians are playing, the town is rocking. It's almost 1am and I am home though, enough of a good thing!

Maybe I'll upload some photos, so you can have a white night too!

Today I am grateful for folk music.

g'night

Tomorrow I will attack the trees. Some need to be removed completely as they are too distracting, others will be softened up. I have spent most of this evening touching up tiny details, straightening edges, and putting in a few highlights. In daylight I will look at it with fresh eyes and see what changes need to be made. It isn't far from finished. Another couple of days, maybe? Goodnight :-)

grinding away at rocks

It's cuppa time, I'm struggling to keep on task. It's a glorious day outside the studio, lizards on the balcony, the sun streaming in, I've even stripped to one layer! I want to be up in the hills, hair blowing in the wind... oh, that's right, short hair these days. Ah well, at least it doesn't get into my paint any more...Later, and yet another cuppa... would rather it were a beer but... I am sitting here at the computer, looking at the photograph then gazing at my painting. It starts to glow. I've done it! I've found the 'Wow' factor in this one... excitement... and then I put my glasses back on. Drat. Why do the colours look better slightly out of focus? OK, back to work again...The light was failing, day was turning into dusk. And then she thought "Why not?" and went downstairs to get that beer that has been lurking in the back of the fridge since her last Kiwi visitors were here.

(The night photo, the last one, looks quite green. This evening I think it is the more accurate one, but as I painted the picture I was using yellow and really thought that I had loaded it with a lot of yellow. A light sensitive series of paintings, it seems! The daylight lets the underpainting show through, and the artificial light picks out the surface colour, maybe? )

Today I am grateful for interesting blogs from all over Italy. I have uploaded a few on the sidebar for ease of access. I am sure there were more that I used to follow before I got painting again. These are mostly stolen from one blog, and I have loaded them "sight unseen". I will delve into them later, and add the ones I used to follow when I find them again.

wow!

I was happily back "into" my painting, having gone "through the pain barrier" and talked myself through the conflicting emotions I was having with this work. (More later on that maybe). But then, thanks to a zealous art lover on Facebook, over lunch I discovered the work of Steve Hanks.

Aaaaargh... the suppressed watercolourist in me is screaming to get out again. WHY am I muddling around trying to earn a living with these works? I have always promised myself that I would work to support my art rather than compromise my art, but putting my effort into "my real art" and "my day-job artmaking" categories just doesn't work. I can justify it rationally, and recgonise the fact that it all feeds into my technique and art practice, but.....................

These landscapes in acrylic and oil may be the last for a while!

Today I am grateful for truly wonderful artists all over the world.

is music my artistic white noise?

Without a cd playing I keep popping back to the computer, putting on something from Youtube, and disrupting my work. With a CD on I hear the first few songs and then don't realise that the music has even finished until I emerge to wash my brushes or contemplate my work from a different part of the room.

What effect is the music having on my brain? Is it like the "white noise" that is used to get a baby to sleep?

OK, so this morning I have learnt that I simply don't paint at all well to Tina Turner even if she is telling me that I am "Simply the Best" so it is back to Max Bygraves I go... later in the day it will be classical music, but for now I need to bounce along a little, "South of the Border" and other wanderings.

Back to work now, this brush in my mouth is loaded! Aye aye aye aye...

:-)