Dante’s Alley: Memory and Presence

I created on-site sketches and studies of an arco in San Piero Maggiore, Dante Alighieri’s neighborhood in Florence. The arco, referred to by the Florentines as Pierino, is not a major gate but a passageway in a section of the ancient wall that surrounded the city. I used the sketches and studies as source material for Dante’s Alley (Pierino). The other paintings in the series were created from my memory of an area in Tuscany where I travel each year that is terrain that Dante might have walked during his exile from his beloved city Florence.

Projects

Dante’s Alley: (pierino) (doorsien), distemper, silver leaf on linen, 48x27 inches

Dante’s Alley: (the spring), distemper, beeswax, pigment on muslin, 48x24 inches

Dante’s Alley (path), distemper, beeswax, pigment on panel, 5x3 inches

Dante’s Alley (phantom), casein, beeswax, pigment on panel, 9x6 inches

Dante’s Alley (sum of grace, paradiso). distemper, beeswax, pigment on panel, 5x3 inches

Dante’s Alley (passage), casein, beeswax, pigment on panel, 4x10 inches

Ovid’s Orchard

The scent in an apple orchard brought me back to my earliest childhood experiences of the orchard at my childhood home.

Ovid’s Orchard, casein, beeswax, oil, pigment on panel, 7x5 inches

Ovid’s Orchard (phantom), casein, beeswax, oil, pigment on panel, 7x5 inches

Ovid’s Orchard (As apples ripen…red under white) (from Ovid), distemper, beeswax, oil, pigment on panel, 7x5 inches