Dolce

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These were little roses – no more than 3” in diameter but the way they were touched by the sunlight, I had to make them big. As I was painting , it occurred to me that this is the first painting I’ve done whose origins were from Italian soil. I’ve painted France quite a few times – flowers, food, scenery – from Paris, the countryside around Paris, spots in the South of France. I can speak decent French and feel like I was French in a past life, but I also love Italy …almost… as much. And I have been there nearly as many times – so it surprised me that I’d not yet gotten around to painting anything Italian.

I took this picture in the Boboli gardens which are on a steep hillside across the Arno from the center of Florence. I was there with my sweetheart and our nibbling, Leigh on an afternoon in late June 2017. It was part of a big family vacation that at times included eight other Browns and the Mantovanis – our “Italian family” from Milan. Joe, Leigh and I had 24 hours together – just us – that was one of the sweetest days ever.

We woke up in the farmhouse where the whole gang of us had stayed the previous two nights – all alone. Not a soul on the property deep in the countryside except us three. The people who ran the place came about 9:00 put out the breakfast food, but until then we had the place to ourselves. Late morning we drove to the small town at the bottom of the hill to catch the half-hour (3 euro!) train into Florence. It turns out we had just missed a Firenze-bound train – and once we figured out the schedules (without any attendant in the station), we realized that the next train wasn’t coming for another whole hour.

None of us were at all upset about it! Leigh and I walked from the station into town and found a place to buy panini and drinks and went back to join Joe sitting on the bench at the side of the tracks. We spent the hour listening to the quiet of the small town, talking a bit and enjoying the sun on our faces, until the train arrived. It would have been so easy to be upset and agitated that we were “wasting” an hour that we could have spent in Florence. But it wasn’t that kind of day.

I’ve named a painting “Douce” which means soft, sweet, tender in French – “Dolce” is the same word in Italian. For all he ways it can be frustrating and chaotic, isn’t there something undeniably captivating, alluring, so special about Italy? It just has to be la dolce vita.

February 2018 – 30″x22″ – Watercolor on paper