Traveler’s Sketchbook

A Love Letter to Italy in Drawings and Paintings

I first traveled to Europe at age 14 to live with a French family on an academic trip. Thus began my lifelong love of travel—slow travel—settling into one location, becoming immersed in the culture for a month—learning customs and some language and soaking up my surroundings. Filling my memory card with images and sensory experiences.

Since retirement and prior to AirBnB, I would search for short term rentals. I settled for a month in Sicily, (Taormina), Rome, Florence, Lucca, Barga and Sperlonga. Slow travel enables one to enjoy the luxury of time and place.  Frequenting a favorite café and making it a morning ritual, finding the best Aperitif, a favorite bookstore and bar…. The best views from familiar steps. And always, I brought along art supplies along on my walks…or found the nearest art supply store to purchase Italian paints and brushes. 

I sketch and use watercolors to capture an immediate feeling of place and my response to the scene. Travel becomes an emotional journey to seek out my heritage.  My entire family is from various parts of Italy, and I see the faces of my aunts and cousins and uncles in the faces I encounter.  They are strangers to me but familiar as family. As are the sights, sounds, smells and gestures. I come from a long line of Italians folks. I’m proud to say so.

Enjoy this little trip.

Traveling to San Miguel D'Allende is not small task if you start and end your journey in Charlottesville, Virginia. There are few flights to choose from to get to a major hub to fly internationally. I got out of CHO and went to ATL--a very busy airport--perhaps the busiest in the U.S.  And from there on to Queterero, Mexico. Once on the ground, my local transport service identified me and the three others who disembarked there. Shortly we were on our way to the final destination: San Miguel, the storied town in the mountains known for its colorful hilly streets, beautiful views, and arts and ex pat communities.

Found cousin's abode and was able to settle in around 7 PM. Her rescue dog was not too sure of me, but over the following week or so, he became my friend.

I loved the tight knit community I found there--Americans from all over the country--and the warmth of the Mexicans themselves. Many Americans (many women) have moved there completely, but they maintain an American address in order to ensure access to their Medicare and they return to the states for medical appointments as needed. 

Life moves at a slow pace in this place and it is altogether pleasing.  It is a comfort to realize that your dollars go very far--you can actually go out to dinner and not spent $ 75 per person. So it is a social place--with good food and restaurants aplenty.  I lived near City Market which was a great benefit for they sell first class foods, wines, and related goods in a clean and spacious setting.

More to come. . .

As a plein air painter, I am often found standing by the side of a road or in a field with my easel and paints somewhat oblivious to time. Painting is an all-immersive activity--a sort of Zen space wherein time is suspended--its a perfect peaceful place. My paintings begin with choosing a location and then developing a composition that can be codified.  What begins as an emotional response to a scene becomes an inner journey to discovery--layers of paint, building a mood bringing an image to life on a two-dimensional surface.  It's always a challenge and when outdoors, there are bugs, wind and other natural elements to contend with--but that is part of the fun of this kind of activity.

So the next time you see a painter standing contemplating a scene, watch how they bring the canvas to life as they search within their soul for their emotional response to the scene.  A painting is not just a recording of elements, but the act of  an artist seeking a deeper understanding of the natural world and one's place in it.  

This summer was hot and humid in Virginia--too hot most days to paint en plein air. Instead, reference photos replaced real life and direct observation.  During this time, I took a class with a local well-known artist who is most accomplished in her use of acrylic paints. She has switched from oils to acrylics recently and found them quite versatile.  I thought I'd give it a try.

I was apprehensive about the class, but she put me at was quickly and created an atmosphere in which I could experiment. The result was that I came away with a new admiration or the properties of acrylic paints and found new means of expressiveness with these water-based paints.  

Later in my studio, I began to see the value of using quick drying acrylics as underpainting and applied oil paints sparingly to this new surface--creating a surface with varying  textures and richness of color.  I intend to continue to experiment with this new way of painting and hope to create some larger works as well.

If you would like more information, give me a shout out--and please do read and sign up for my newsletter, which comes out every few weeks, announcing new works and opportunities to collect my art.

Birch trees with a few leaves left and winter light shedding purple shadows ...a ride in the Blue Ridge Mountains never disappoints. This is painted with Gouache on canvas panel with a light coat of clear matte varnish to protect the surface. If framed, $ 135.

Artists spend hours and days working alone in lofts, studios, corners of their living rooms, garages, tiny works spaces. Time alone is nourishing and necessary in order to bring forward their artistic visions. Artists don't feel deprived of company when they are alone for they have their materials, their muse, their imaginations. 

I am fortunate to have a small studio on the second floor of a brownstone in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia. The light is beautiful and the bay window provides me the cat bird seat on activity on our Downtown Mall.  These days, however, there is little to no activity on our pedestrian Mall.  Restaurants and shops have gone out of business and are shuttered. Bars have  limited outdoor service. College students have not returned--and we don't know when or if they will.  The sadness is palpable even though some folks are trying to make the best of a bad situation.

I don't have the urge to walk the Mall these days because it is nearly empty. Strangers and stragglers are walking around, many without masks. I find this makes me angry for I cannot understand why people are averse to wearing a simple protective face mask during a pandemic. What could possibly be their excuse? 

Later in the day I walked my dog on the beautiful Monticello Trail, a walk in the hills surrounding Jefferson's Monticello. Alone with my dog and my thoughts and my mask, I pass numerous small groups and couples--most of whom are not wearing masks. A pleasant walk turns into an angry march-again, mask-less people. Yet masks are required by law.

There are no art openings to attend, no galleries to visit, few friends to see and limited time with my family.  

I opt for going back to my studio. Perhaps the best place for me today is back in my art space, with my colors and paints, my music, my happy thoughts and creative challenges. 

A good day these days is accepting solitude, staying in the moment, enjoying the creative process, staying healthy and thinking of how best to express my inner joy.

I hope the same for you.

As we adjust and transform our habits to accommodate life in the time of Covid-19, we are making use of virtual reality: Virtual hugs, virtual meetings, virtual gatherings, virtual affection. That is our new reality. In the past, the ease with which we manifested our social selves, lavishing  our affections on each other,  convening a meeting or hosting a family dinner has been replaced with new and unique ways to experience each other's presence. It is nor altogether unsatisfying but is a  tepid replacement for the real thing. We will all value the fluidity of our social society so much more as this long-term distancing situation persists.

I am using this time down time by taking solo car rides to various out of the way spots where I enjoy painting. I  want to be productive despite the underlying anxiety that bubbles under the surface of my calm exterior.  I pack my hand sanitizer, cleaners, wipes, mask, and gloves, and my plein air oil painting kit and drive southward toward the James River and a little bluff which overlooks a bend in the river. I am well-assured I will be there alone--few people hang there. And when they do, there is healthy respect for maintaining space between us. 

It is early spring. Magenta red bud trees are blooming and baby chartreuse green leaf-buds decorate the branches of trees that overhang the riverbank. The sky is springtime blue and puffy clouds float by. This is my favorite reality--a place to convene with nature, to be alone with my muse.

The real world is scary right now. The virtual world is less satisfying than the real. My work is to take the chaos of the real landscape and transform it to a virtual reality that works in two dimensional reality.

I live in the painter's world which is both real and virtual. 

I love to set up my paints in a field, arrange my palette, establish my point of view and capture the scene in front of me with paint and canvas. What do I see? What do I want to say about it? How do I feel?

Shadows shift and the air moves the trees. Sunlight hides behind clouds, reappears, and darts across the landscape. Nothing is static. The landscape is dynamic. The colors and light dance for me.

Gardens at Casa Maria, Albemarle County                                      J. Goodman 2019

Painting out of doors is a challenge due to the quixotic nature of the elements. I need to be quick and certain in my brushwork.

Taking photos as a reference for use later in the studio will help me to finalize the painting. Once in the studio I have the opportunity to take more time to think, revise, and further articulate my visual image of my experience earlier that day.  

Now the day is a memory. I paint in order to fix a memory forever in time and space.

Moving from reality to memory to reflection to signing a painting--that is what I love to do.

Marketing your art is perhaps the most vexing aspect of being an artist. But in the end, most rewarding.

Spring in 5/4 Time       12 x 36" oil on canvas

Marketing activities are a must and seem to run contrary to our creative urge. Aside from having to attend to online activity, technical issues and challenges of finding new markets, it takes time away from being in the studio, messing with paint, paper, ink, glue, and all the wonderful tools of the trade we love to touch and explore. Yet, if you don't sell, you are missing a huge part of the artist's experience. Selling one's art, especially to a stranger, is letting a little piece of yourself go off to the world. Selling represents acceptance of your ideas and creativity. Selling means receiving a fee for your work. Selling is an affirmation that your work has value. (Pricing work is a topic for another blog post.) And, in the end, how many paintings can you store in your studio?

I recently had a chance to talk with my artist teacher, mentor who said that she devoted Mondays to marketing. She developed a strategic and tactical marketing plan for her work which is always evolving. She took time to research  juried shows, deadlines, online competitions, and other outward facing activities. Each Monday she would  attack the list. She would be sure to post new works and update availability of other items. And she would keep track of her efforts--which ideas bore fruit, which were deadness...  She updated her customer lists and did outreach to them, sending new images their way. She would also jot down names of artists she heard of from friends and did some reading on art history.

By doing so each week, she focused on one activity without feeling she was missing out on her time in the studio.

She felt good about the activities she was undertaking. And, on Tuesday, she was ready to connect again with her materials, feeling positive about her efforts to sell--and jot down ideas to review during her next marketing session.  Make appointments with gallery owners, shop owners, and friends...then get back and create. Hope this works for you...a good leaf to turn over for 2019.

Since travel and art are my two great loves, I recently combined the two. I participated in a workshop by renowned artist Julien Merrow-Smith in an estate in the Vaucluse, France. Provence is an area of the country replete with scenic panorama, picturesque villages and hillsides dotted with old farm houses and newer farm estates. The storied landscape is a gorgeous combination of villages, valleys, hills and hillocks, swathes of vines, and iconic vistas painted by the great impressionists. Therefore, it is not without risk that one tries to recapture this alluring and mystical land on canvas or paper.

The workshop was larger than I expected, numbering 16 with a few non-painter spouses and significant others along for the joy of a Provencal vacation. We were housed in two contiguous estates high on a hillside. These chateaux date back centuries, outfitted with modern conveniences and curated with beautiful antiques and artworks.

For nine days, we awoke to wonderful croissants, fruit, yogurt and coffee, then got our painting gear and headed to one or another scenic places. A few days of rain necessitated some indoor still life painting as well. Our teacher and workshop leader provided ample demonstrations of his techniques--but I dare say no one could replicate his style and finesse 100%. However, the joy of painting and excitement of trying anew each day held my interest throughout the course. Food was prepared and served by a skilled and elegant trio of Belgians--a master chef and her team. Meals were fun, delicious and social. Not having to worry about a car, transport to sites and provisions as well cooking and tidying up gave us all a real vacation. The experience was immersive--a book camp for painters.

Many of my fellow painters had significant experience and several were experienced instructors in their own right. I was a little intimidated at first, but gathered more confidence each day. While many of may small paintings I do not considered finished, I can rework a but in my studio referring to photos and my memories. If you are interested, follow Postcards from Provence, Julien's website. And take a little risk--sign up!