North End, Boston - Pizzeria Regina

"Walking by Regina's Pizza in the Early Morning - North End" (16"X12", Oil on Canvas, SOLD)

This small-ish painting shows another one of the North End's Italian food icons known throughout the country. The young woman in the shaded foreground is a real estate agent talking on the phone while walking across Thacher Street to her first appointment. The young man in the sunlit background is walking into the distance and drawing our eye further into the depth of the painting. He's headed for Thacher Court and Sal's Lunch, which is the subject of another painting I've done and is also on this blog. This effort works pretty well for me and is a refinement of the very first painting I did when I decided to pursue art for a living. It looks a lot better, believe me. It was painted on site and then finished in my studio/back room.

This painting is also where I first got a taste for rendering the beautiful patina'ed copper sheathing that graces so many of the tenements throughout the North End. I truly hope that as time passes these unique turn-of-the-century architectural elements aren't torn away to make space for the faceless modern constructions that pass for "Luxury Condos". The thing that gives me hope is the rehab recently done on the Segel Building at 18 Cooper St, a building that I painted and have showing in a previous entry on this blog. The job that the developer did is virtually invisible from the outside, and he opted not to re-paint the outside of the copper bay window column (which has been done in some older rehabs, notably across the square from Pizzeria Regina). He told me he initially wanted to paint it to "unify and modernize" the mottled look of the copper. Big thanks to him for ultimately deciding otherwise.

Lots of people really like the pizza from this place, and for good reason, I think. I've only had a few of their pies, but I've truly enjoyed each one. Additionally, I've smelled the pizzas bought by others as they eat them in their cars, unable to even wait until they get home with them. The smell alone is enough to make my stomach twitch for a dose of Regina's Sicilian-style Pizza.