Italy and Sicily - Architecture

"Just after a Spring Rain in Vernazza, Italy" (24"X18", Oil on Canvas, $750)

In this painting you see the 'other' main piazza of Vernazza - the one that overlooks the protected harbor (the other main piazza is talked about in relation to another painting in an earlier post). This is just after a brief spring rain and the people are coming out to continue their business, but I'm interested in the dynamic between the pretty woman in the foreground and the local guys in the background. I know this is an everyday scene all over the world. I also know that it's fun to paint this kind of small human activity and juxtapose it with some large-scale architecture, especially Italian architecture.

This is one of the main buildings seen in any tourist postcards from the town as it comes right to the edge of the open-ended piazza. The public square is paved with large stones and is where the umbrellas for the restaurant in the ground floor of this building are set up. The umbrellas and the restaurant are closed until after the rain, since there's no other seating. The windows in the building are almost all shuttered against the cloudburst but they too will soon be open. The ever-present laundry is just being re-hung, and the outdoor lighting will go out as soon as the sun comes back to dry out the bedsheets and the rain-slicked square.

I think the color of the building is especially warm and the pitted paint job reveals enough bare stucco to keep it interesting. The almost-white overcast sky in the upper right and the shadowy archway with the dark green dumpster makes a good contrast while reminding the viewer that everything isn't always so picturesque in Italy.

Having said that, I have to add that I loved my time in Vernazza, as well as this brief rain and the way that it transformed everything. Also, that I had a very nice meal of pesto pasta at the very restaurant in the painting (on a sunny day), seated at the outermost edge, while a roving band of musicians played and the local cats begged for table scraps. Entirely charming.