I’m writing now from Bologna, Italy, where my friend Lauren and I are on a two month trip through Europe. We’re here to travel, make art, research, and explore (and eat lots of good food). During this trip, I’ve set myself up with a couple of starting questions for making art: 1) how do plants and animals interact with the human-built environments (some of which are ancient and some very modern) of our destinations, 2) How can I experiment with combining painting, drawing, monoprint, and/or collage to create images inspired by my experiences here.
So far, I’ve run into many, many pigeons, some feral graveyard cats, a fight between starlings and sparrowhawks, giant catfish, swan families, and a horde of turtles. One of the nice parts of traveling through the early summer has also been that so many flowers are in bloom. I spent a decent part of our time in Paris smelling every rose I passed and then chasing down the jasmine and honeysuckle in Lyon and Torino. Green spaces have been a bit fewer and farther between in the city center of Bologna, but I’ve enjoyed watching starlings dart above the Piazzas and finding many, varied lion sculptures throughout the city.
As I travel, I’ll be painting on watercolor and acrylic paper with water soluble paints like watercolor, gouache, and acrylic. I’ve also got some watercolor pencils and a little gelli plate for monoprints. I love oil painting, but I wanted to simplify packing and clean-up as much as possible while we travel. What this means is that I can make quite a few smaller paintings with multiple layers, but certain techniques like wiping out and scraping back will be limited to what the paper can tolerate.
