Italy, Water Buffalo & Art

A friend of mine Amy Heller took this photo of me in front of my Water Buffalo painting. This was part of an Italy Show at Gail Browne Gallery in Provincetown. A few years ago, Castle Hill organized a trip to Italy in collaboration with Gail Browne and Bill Papaleo in the Amalfi Coast. It was a fabulous trip where 11 artists came together and painted and drew and drank and ate and ate some more! It was fabulous. All had a great time.

Three Water Buffalo's eating in harmony

Detail of a Fresco

We are planning another trip for next April, so watch for details. Gail and Bill will again leading the workshop.

Cute old woman with her garden pot in Terravecia

Another Beautiful Old Fresco form the 14th Century

View of Amalfi Coast

A little Island of the Coast of Naples, Procida

I went to this little island called Procida with a friend Julia, after we finished the Castle Hill Workshop. Though the  workshop was in Italy it was still work for me in many ways....dealing with the money, making sure everyone was happy, putting out personality situations, passing out tickets for boat rides...things like that.

So this was a little holiday, one week on this isalnd.  The only thing that ever happened on that island was the filming of the movie IL POSTINO. Which was their claim to fame. It was a tiny fishing village, very similar to Provincetown, though they still have fish there. Every man had a different kind of fish they fished for. Polipo....squid, and sardine man.  Hundred year old men sat on the pier repairing their fishing nets. It was beautiful to watch. Cats were hanging out waiting for some fish left-overs. The food was great. The stories were great. I will post some journal entries in my next post....very funny, from the Julia AKA Sophia Salinger Loren.

I definitely had a thing for the Water Buffalo

One of the highlights was going to the Water Buffalo Farm. Water Buffalo are gigantic creatures, yet gentle and beautiful. They lounged in the mud, rolling around, and then horning their neighbors. That would be a verb of rubbing their horns against another - while lounging in the mud (I made that up). They were delicate in a very strange way. They did a lot of eating. I was in a water buffalo trance while I was there. We spend a few hours wondering on the farm, and I must have taken 400 photos of them, feeding them and just staring at their crude beauty. 

We ate at the cafe there, we had miscellaneous buffalo mozzarella and other cheeses and bread and olives, all was just outrageous.  They also had smoked mozzarella, that was cooked over a fire, right out back. It was like nothing I ever ate. And then the red wine....that was a lovely thing too!

Blue knocker on Blue Door

Chewing somethings up

Political sign on the side of the road in Naples

Pasteum Ruins

Gail Browne reading the Banner with Water Buffalo ignoring her

This is Julia eating polipo, her favorite (Octoypus)

This was in a tiny town above Amalfi,
I forgot the name off the top of my head

Italy is a beautiful place. Well that goes without saying. So much history, so much art, so many churches, so many beautiful clothes lines (I began a study of clothes lines, I'll need to dig them up), so many beautiful people, such good food.  The Lemons were in season when we were there and they were the size of your head. Had some delicious Lemoncello. A strong after dinner drink that is made with lemons and sugar and something that makes it have a very strong alcoholic content. 

I met a guy wondering in the forest looking for fresh asparagus. He was old and walked for miles to gather what looked like a small bunch of asparagus. It was a thin bundle. It was dinner. It always tastes better when you pick your own meal. Wild asparagus grows very differently than say an asparagus farm. It is few and far between. It grows randomly like weeds. And that's the end of the story.