Revisiting Italy...Again

This week, I was honored by Wedge Mountain Winery of Leavenworth by being named the "Artist of the Month" for May. The winery has put me and a couple of my works on their website along with a link to my website. I appreciate the honor very much.

It all came about last weekend when the winery's owner, Charlie McKee, came by my tent at last week's Leavenworth Art-in-the-Park. He fell in love with some of my paintings that feature Italian scenes. Charlie has been going to Italy since 1955 and did much of his wine making training in Northern Italy's Piedmonte district. This also happens to be the same area where Susan and I live when we go to Italy.

So Charlie and I had shared some great memories of the wine growing areas of Piedmonte and some of the small towns like Alba, Barolo, and Barbaresco, to name a few.

When we live in Italy, we live in a house on a hill about two miles outside of the small town of Canale. It is surrounded by vineyards. One day, while on a walk on a road through the vineyards, we came upon a small cluster of houses, only about 300 yards from our house. I saw instantly that this scene would make a great painting and photographed it immediately.

This winter, I finally sat down to create the painting. It struck me all at once that this scene, as I envisioned it, would be somewhat reminiscent of some of the country scenes painted by one of my favorite Impressionists, Camille Pissarro. I have always loved his work, especially his country landscapes.

While his colors are more muted than mine, I created this new painting, titled, "Canale - A Country Road," with Pissarro works in mind. Now that it is done, I have to say it is my favorite of the new works I created this winter.

Sometimes, when I create something new, it usually has to grow on me for a while before I include it in my public collection. Some works I really don't like and they never grow on me. Only my wife ever sees these works. But I fell in love with this work long before I finished it.

Although it appeared for the first time publicly at my show last weekend, it garnered a lot of attention and I even sold one print of the work. If you would like to see it, either come to one of my shows...or view it on my website at:

http://www.corkrum.com/jim/canale_country_road.htm