finally....

It's been quiet up here, I haven't painted much the past year or so, more focussed on music and other things. But it's time to brush off the cobwebs, as I'm off to Italy in August for a month of outdoor landscape painting at the Jerusalem Studio School summer program, headed by Israel Hershberg and his co-teachers. We'll be staying at and painting the landscape around a former monastry on top of a hill just out of Siena, Tuscany, as well as weekly day trips to see some of the artistic treasures that Italy holds. I'm sooo looking forward to 4 solid weeks of doing nothing but being outdoors with paints and easel again, not to mention the joy of getting my painting butt kick-started back into action by the master teachers there!

In the class I did in France with Rita Natarova a few years ago, I really loved the way of working with colour shapes (or 'colour spots' as she called them) that Rita teaches; she studied with Israel Hershberg and I'm pretty sure we will be working in a similar way - of placing one colour shape next to another. With Rita we worked indoors with the model, so bringing this to the landscape, my real love, in a learning situation is going to be truly wonderful!