Pienza Love

"Pienza Love"
12 x 12 Oil Painting
by Pat Fiorello
$550

 

Fresh on the heels of my "Painting Villas and Gardens "workshop in Italy, I came home filled with ideas and inspiration. I am going to use some of the beautiful places I saw while traveling as the springboard for a new painting series, "Italian Gardens" .

This painting "Pienza Love" is the first in that series. I fell in love with this building completely enveloped in flowers and vines.

 If you've ever been to Pienza you know there's a lot to love there. It's one of my favorite towns in Tuscany. Totally charming. It was rebuilt by order of Pope Pius II to be the ideal Renaissance town. You can learn more about Pienza here .  If you're planning a trip to Tuscany, I'd strongly recommend a short visit to Pienza.

La Foce Garden

La Foce Garden
8 x 8 Oil Painting
by Pat Fiorello
 $200

 

Part of the inspiration for my latest workshop, "Painting the Villas and Gardens of Italy" was seeing this book at the NY Botanical Gardens a couple of years ago.

I've been to Florence Italy and the Tuscan Region at least a dozen times and was not familiar with this particular garden. Turns out it has a very storied history which you can learn more about here. The gardens were exquisitely designed and one of the former owners, Iris Origo, was an author of the book War in the Val D'Orcia set in this part of Italy. She was a true humanitarian and used the home as a refuge for the pilgrims and peasants that had no place to stay. 

While we we were not permitted to paint on location in the garden, we did go on a private tour to better understand the history and design of the garden. I came home with lots of photo's and inspiration for future painting. "La Foce Garden" above was a small painting I did during the workshop, but I hope to create many more paintings of this special place in the days and weeks ahead.

Roses of San Giovanni D'Asso- watercolor and photo's of Tuscany

Roses of San Giovanni D'Asso
9 x 12 watercolor
by Pat Fiorello
SOLD

This is a watercolor version of the same scene painted in oil that I posted the other day.  Since I had painters who work in both mediums on the workshop I try to do demonstrations in both. This one went home with one of my students who purchased it for the memory of the lesson and the beautiful place in San Giovanni D'Asso  that we called home for a week.

 We had such a wonderful time visiting and painting different villas, gardens and villages and soaking in the Italian experience.
Here are some of my favorite photo's to give you a flavor of the trip.

Gardens at La Foce

Villa Barberino

Special event in Florence

Botanical Garden in Florence

Poppy fields we stumbled upon

Poppies on the train tracks

Oil demonstration in our garden

La Foce

Villa Barberino

View from La Foce

Beautiful Pienza

Joy of Poppies

Joy of Poppies
9 x 12 watercolor
by Pat Fiorello
$100

 

This was a "paint along" I did with students on my workshop who were beginning watercolorists. We did it together breaking it down, step by step. Splattered a bit just to convey the "Joy of Poppies".

San Giovanni D'asso Rose

San Giovanni D'Asso Rose
6 x 8 oil painting
by Pat Fiorello
 SOLD

Some of my students at the recent "Painting Villas and Gardens of Italy" workshop wanted to see a demonstration on how to paint a single rose.

So one afternoon, we set out to the garden of the villa where we were staying and I did a short demo on this rose. The sun wasn't cooperating too much,  but with a little artistic license was able to show how to simplify the rose into big shapes- -the light shape, the shadow shape, the background and suggest the rose without having to slavishly copy every petal and little detail.

Roses of San Giovanni D'Asso-oil version

Roses of San Giovanni D'Asso
8 x 10 oil painting
by Pat Fiorello
 $300

 

This is one of the paintings I did as a demonstration during my recent workshop in Tuscany, "Painting the Villas and Gardens of Italy". One of my favorite subjects to paint is soft flowers against textured stone and Italy is filled with  that type of inspiration. This was right in the backyard garden of the villa we stayed at in San Giovanni D'Asso.