Then paint!

It's a funny thing about Italy. Whatever your reasons for coming here, there is a kind of bug you catch, and those who get bitten by the Italy bug just seem unable to bring themselves to leave. When a new person arrives (and we get a fresh batch every year) you can tell right away whether he's going to just finish whatever it is he came for or be a long-termer. The long-termers get that look very quickly that says, "I'm going to stay here, even if I have to fake my death and create a new identity to do it."

The lovely and talented Kelly Medford nails down a few reasons why...

... the warm light in Medford's paintings is a dependable constant in her work from Rome. "When I moved here from Florence, what I noticed is that the light in Rome is so dramatically different," says Medford. "It's really warm, almost a rosy pink. When I moved here I had to keep buying so many different cadmiums because I couldn't find the strength I needed to depict it. I made a conscious choice to exaggerate the warmth here. Now I really see it that way -- that is really how I see Rome, and how I paint Rome."

I went into town yesterday to have a drink with my art teacher and said, "I still fear paint though." She said the obvious thing: then paint!!



~