Studio in Spoleto

As an artist I arrange studio space around me wherever I travel, be it the back seat of a motorbike under a tree in the Mediterranean, next to a canoe off an African river, the back of a jeep in New Zealand or a room somewhere in Europe. It doesn't take long before I'm organized.    

From the art shop I schlepped canvas and art material (that sense of always being an art student!) to my apartment, covered the dining room chairs to serve as easel, the dining table became a work table, pasta pot a water container, I kept empty jars and styrene trays to mix paint, a coffee jar to keep my brushes in - and I went to work on a painting for the hospital in Spoleto. 

 

Two weeks later 'Hope and Faith' was unveiled.  It was a special evening attended by artists, old friends and new friends.  The work is a landscape and narrative, it speaks of a deeply personal journey that started on the other side of the world and ended here, in Spoleto. 

 

Reading the work from left to right, it begins with our spiritual centre in Australia, Uluru, sacred place of prayer.  The raw Outback grows into the gentle greens of Umbria where gum and olive trees grow side by side, in one soil.  Architectural symbols of faith and prayer are illuminated and the journey ends in an empty bed on the right.  The figure behind the bed could be anyone; a doctor, a patient or perhaps a celestial being watching over us at the end of the day when we go to sleep.  The work juxtapositions day and night and is painted 'ala prima', in loose and spontaneous brushwork.

The painting is in honour and memory of my beloved Robert, and I feel strangely comforted leaving something of myself behind in Italy.