I received a comment today reminding me I have not talked the two workshops I attended in Italy during May and June of 2009. Well let me say they were the two best workshops I have ever attended. I learned more and worked harder. I have taken workshops before and none were bad, all were good, some better than others but I left with more than I started with. The one's in Italy surpassed anything previous.
back in the water for the same scene but different shadows and atmosphere. I knew as soon as I touched the canvas with a long hair #1 brush to sketch the scene I had it. I just knew and I did. It was the best of the workshop. All our dinners were at the Abbey and we sure needed them. I slept in a convented monk cell now bed room with a window that faced west. I got great view from it as the sun sat over the distance hills and mountains. The bed was from the 13th century. Too narrow and too short and designed to help a monk repent for something. I was too tired to care about it. Slept like a log. I was only an eating, painting, sleeping machine. On Friday afternoon we took a 10 mile field trip to the Abbey Monte Oliveto Maggiore and I loved every minute of it. This 
functioning Benedictine monastery has incredible frescoes depicting the life and career of St. Benedict by Luca Signorelli and Il Sodoma and are 500 years old. The most interesting thing for me was how beautiful were the paintings of the boys and young men and how plain were the women and how few they were. The young gentlemen were far more numerous, feminine and erotic and the artists did not hesitate to show it. The church is now baroque from the 17th century and is beautiful. I had great people around me and great teachers. Maddine and Joe live and breath art 24/7. They have working studio in an industrial park in Buonconvento and a sales gallery. They run 6 or 7 workshops a year. Usually they come to the US during the winter to their apartment in New York and teach various workshops around the country. This year with the bad economy they elected to stay in Italy for the winter and paint. I truly envy them.
For about a year I had this growing feeling I really needed something to kick me in the ass and get me to a new level of technique and experience. I needed a group of highly motivated artists and a different learning environment. When I have a problem to solve my default mode is to research and read. At my local Little Professor's book store I found a copy of American Artist's Workshop magazine, Spring, 2008. It was filled with workshops to and beautiful photos. Just what I needed. At home in the evening reading about this workshop and that workshop I got to page 104 and there was the picture of a an artist painting the Tuscany landscape. All the way up to page 117 the article and picture captured my attention and interest. Two American artists, Maddine Insalaco and Joe Vinson had for the past 13 years ran several plein air workshops in and round Tuscany. The more I read and looked the more I became convinced that this was the one for me. I checked out their web site, http://www.landscapepainting.com/, sent them emails with lots of questions. This was a big decision for me. To leave home for about 6 weeks, pay a lot of money that I really couldn't afford to do, get involved with people I didn't know, perhaps make a total fool of myself and waste everyone's time and my money. Doubt, indecision, late middle age crisis, it was all there. But I did it anyway. I enrolled, sent money, bought plane tickets, got new paints, brushes, canvas board and push my way along. I made it. Other than a slight jet engine malfunction flying over France (it shook like a washing machine that is in spin cycle and out of balance). Got to Florence, took the train south to Buonconvento and found my hotel. I had dinner with Maddine and Joe the next evening and it was great cooking. I found out that in addition to teaching art during the spring and summer, they run a gourmet workshop in November when the white truffles are gathered. After tasting Maddine pasta I could see why it was always full. After all this is Tuscany and food and wine are king and queen here. The next day we picked up my fellow students at the train station and went to our bread and break farm, an agri tourismo, called La Ripolina. It a working farm estate, with sheep, vinyards, fields for crops plus lots of surplus peasant cottages. These beautiful field stone cottages dated from the 17th century and were also storage rooms, workshops, and stables. 
The manior house dated from the 15th and the abbey across the road from the 6th! 
This was where the first workshop called Open Air Fundamentals would be based out of. Here we would have our breakfast, sleep, evening art lectures but dinner would be in Buonconvento at Mario's. From Saturday on their was no let up. It was up at 7, breakfast at 8, painting by 9, lunch from 12 to 1:30 (it was gourmet too with fresh cheeses, fruits, salads, meats, and wine) back to painting till 5, rest till 7, 
lecture, than dinner, finally and gratefully sleep. Two to four works per day were expected. No scrappers or wipe out accepted. Everything was critiqued in the evening around 5 pm. Tough love and good advice. First we did value studies in charcoal, next in monochrome in oils with a knife. Then we went to compostion of the landscape in pensil and in oil, values and atmospheric perspective, lectures in the evening about Nature as a subject in Western Art and Technical aspects of landscape painting. The palette was limited to zine white, burnt umber, ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, cad yellow light, chrome green, yellow ochre and burnt sienna. Landscape followed landscape in a blur, we got a break on Tuesday by a field trip to Siena to see the frecos of Ambrogio Lorenzeti in the Sala dei Nove at the Palazzo Pubblico. 
No pictures can be taken inside so be happy with building itself. Next day it was painting as usual. Maddine and Joe teaching style is a short demo and than go around observing and offering advice. They never took the brush from my hand and did it themselves. You learned to squint down, nail the values, simplify the composition. By Friday afternoon I was whipped but we got a break. A field trip and lunch in Montalcino. A mountain side town famous for its wine.
The manior house dated from the 15th and the abbey across the road from the 6th! 
This was where the first workshop called Open Air Fundamentals would be based out of. Here we would have our breakfast, sleep, evening art lectures but dinner would be in Buonconvento at Mario's. From Saturday on their was no let up. It was up at 7, breakfast at 8, painting by 9, lunch from 12 to 1:30 (it was gourmet too with fresh cheeses, fruits, salads, meats, and wine) back to painting till 5, rest till 7, 
lecture, than dinner, finally and gratefully sleep. Two to four works per day were expected. No scrappers or wipe out accepted. Everything was critiqued in the evening around 5 pm. Tough love and good advice. First we did value studies in charcoal, next in monochrome in oils with a knife. Then we went to compostion of the landscape in pensil and in oil, values and atmospheric perspective, lectures in the evening about Nature as a subject in Western Art and Technical aspects of landscape painting. The palette was limited to zine white, burnt umber, ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, cad yellow light, chrome green, yellow ochre and burnt sienna. Landscape followed landscape in a blur, we got a break on Tuesday by a field trip to Siena to see the frecos of Ambrogio Lorenzeti in the Sala dei Nove at the Palazzo Pubblico. 
No pictures can be taken inside so be happy with building itself. Next day it was painting as usual. Maddine and Joe teaching style is a short demo and than go around observing and offering advice. They never took the brush from my hand and did it themselves. You learned to squint down, nail the values, simplify the composition. By Friday afternoon I was whipped but we got a break. A field trip and lunch in Montalcino. A mountain side town famous for its wine. Come Saturday I had to say goodby to my new friends and especially to my room mate Bill, a fine gentleman if there ever was one.
The next week I spent in and around Buonconvento sketching and painting. Maddine and Joe were kind to let me borrow a french easel. Most of the equipment, including easels and canvas, they provide as part of the course. I really love this little town. Its a walled town with a gate that is 500 years old. I hung around the cafe's and coffee bars and watched how the farmers would stop by for a quick espresso and a grapa (grape brandy) and down both in two swallows and then back to the fields. Children were everywhere and so were grandmothers and grand dads, sitting in the door ways on near the park fountain. Evening was the time for everyone to come out and stroll. Young parents with babies and old women who seemed to never has seen a baby before by the excitement they created. This town of maybe 2000 has a sacred art museum, Museo d'Arte Sacra della Val d'Arbia, that was having an exhibition of a breast feeding Madonna. Middle Ages icons and early Renaissance works were present showing the artistic progression of the Madonna and Child. From a rather stern almost bored looking Mary and a rather homely baby Jesus to a very humanistic and living mother and child nursing in front of saints and exposed to the whole world. I was amused by the contrast of children's reactions to an exposed breast in Buonconvento and Columbus, Ohio. In Columbus the George Tooker exhibition had female nudes and children giggled, laughed, fell on the floor in embarrassment. In Buonconvento it is an everyday natural experience. How else could a baby feed? I took walks and rode bike in the country side and said "buongiorno" to everyone. The artochokes were in harvest so all dishes had artichokes and the hill town had artichoke festivals. Joe and Maddine were very kind and we spent a whole Saturday going to one festival after another. In Tuscany they know how to have a good time.
My week break came to an end and I moved from Buonconvento to Abbadia Ardenga which is only 8 miles down the road. Its an old (what isn't in Italy) Abbey built in the 11th century that once had 3 naves but two fell down. It was also a hospital and large Church estate. This workshop 6 artist plus a couple of spouses and was called the "elements of landscape painting" based on work by P.H. Valenciennes in the late 18th century. He broke landscape painting into basic "elements" such as time, trees, clouds, water, fields and said that each element had to be mastered and that is what we all attempted to do. Now the pressure was on. Rise and shine, eat, paint, eat, paint, critique, lecture, eat, sleep do it all over again the next day. One days it was cloud studies, another trees, another how time effects a scene. I painted on a sand bar in the middle of a stream in the morning and in the afternoon. I had failures and success but Maddine and Joe always kept me going, make me push myself harder. I had a bad tree day on the second day. It was discouraging, I was tired and feeling my age but I didn't quit. Joe made suggestions, showed me what to look at, gave advice. Maddine demostated and I learned. Clouds are hard, water is hard. Its all hard at first. I was running with fast people. One lady was a surgeon from New York who found all this very relaxing! She had a great eye for detail. I did have a break through of sorts. I painted a stream in the morning and the results were ok. Break for lunch then
back in the water for the same scene but different shadows and atmosphere. I knew as soon as I touched the canvas with a long hair #1 brush to sketch the scene I had it. I just knew and I did. It was the best of the workshop. All our dinners were at the Abbey and we sure needed them. I slept in a convented monk cell now bed room with a window that faced west. I got great view from it as the sun sat over the distance hills and mountains. The bed was from the 13th century. Too narrow and too short and designed to help a monk repent for something. I was too tired to care about it. Slept like a log. I was only an eating, painting, sleeping machine. On Friday afternoon we took a 10 mile field trip to the Abbey Monte Oliveto Maggiore and I loved every minute of it. This 
functioning Benedictine monastery has incredible frescoes depicting the life and career of St. Benedict by Luca Signorelli and Il Sodoma and are 500 years old. The most interesting thing for me was how beautiful were the paintings of the boys and young men and how plain were the women and how few they were. The young gentlemen were far more numerous, feminine and erotic and the artists did not hesitate to show it. The church is now baroque from the 17th century and is beautiful. I had great people around me and great teachers. Maddine and Joe live and breath art 24/7. They have working studio in an industrial park in Buonconvento and a sales gallery. They run 6 or 7 workshops a year. Usually they come to the US during the winter to their apartment in New York and teach various workshops around the country. This year with the bad economy they elected to stay in Italy for the winter and paint. I truly envy them.Would I do it again? At the drop of a hat. I would suffer the awful air plane trip and discomfort to do it. I highly recommend it.
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