About a year ago I travelled to the Euganean Hills near Padua to draw and paint a landscape that had been commissioned by the writer Myra Robinson. I knew Myra was thinking of leaving this beautiful and fascinating area and the painting was to be a reminder of the hills for her home in England. Myra has a discerning eye for sure and I wanted to do her hills justice.
Travelling to Italy to do a landscape painting has, luckily been an habitual pleasure for me over the years yet I arrived in a slight state of anxiety because with commissions there are always a few unknowns that go with the process of selection and creation.
The first of those is that usually the particular view to be painted has not yet been chosen. It’s been discussed but only generally as a location and so there’s a chance you might find a view that doesn’t quite hit target. With Myra these concerns soon fell away as we drove across the hills on a recce to see her chosen locations. I needn’t have worried. They were all visually magical.
As Myra describes in the latest edition of Italy Magazine “My painting would not be the landscape typically thought of as “Italian,”… In my area — glorious Petrarch country — volcanic hills with vineyards on south-facing slopes and chestnut trees facing north cluster around deep green valleys interspersed with small villages, each with its own bell tower. It’s an area of rare wild flowers and butterflies where time stands still..”
The weather as always plays its part in the drama. I need the action to be lit just so to be able to draw the chosen view a number of times without getting blown away, drenched or burnt. That has to happen at the right time of the day as the light changes quite quickly and the principal elements and tones adjust accordingly. The dramatic space between a foreground tree and the sheer drop behind it can change as quickly as a cloud floats by making it all look as flat as a pancake.
As part of the deal I hand-delivered the painting myself. It involved a long train journey with many opportunities for damage along the way. Even though it was well-wrapped it was still a fragile object and a stray prod from a foot on the Underground or a random poke from a man with a pole could wreak havoc. I imagined arriving at my destination with a torn piece of parcel paper and a wooden shard of broken frame. I visualised something similar to Laurel and Hardy in “The Piano”.
Thankfully the painting arrived completely intact and she loved it.
Read the story of the commission in ItalyMagazine
https://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/what-its-commission-italian-landscape-painting-today