violet sky

This is a small - 8" x 8" - piece that I created for my recent show at the Summer Gallery. Six years ago I spent the spring and early summer living and studying in Florence, a city I love with a passion usually reserved for sentient beings. I took hundreds of photographs and made dozens of sketches, and I filled two journals. Every so often I dip into this well of inspiration and images, and this piece is the result of my most recent bout of yearning and remembering. It is based on a journal entry, a memory, of sitting in the uncharacteristically empty piazza after a day of rain watching the setting sun turning the sky violet, backlighting the filigree of the Campanile and Baptistry. The air was filled with swallows, their black silhouettes darting in and out of the arches of the bell tower as the first stars emerged in the twilight. I remember the smell of wet pavement, tobacco, and tuberose perfume, and I remember the fading violet sky.