How to paint an Italian landscape in Tuscany.

Painting “A” by Gregory Hardy, Darkness and Light (2013)

In our last post, we wrote that if you search in YouTube « How to paint an Italian landscape », you will get about 5470 results. In the vicinity of painting “B” (below),  all paintings look alike. It is a painting that gives happiness to its creator and buyer, hence the role of art. Our last post also raises the following question : why attending a painting workshop in Tuscany when you could watch at least 500 clips for free on various techniques on how to paint a landscape.

And then, I came across an article in the reputable French art magazine, Vie des Arts (no 235), on Gregory Hardy, a text entitled Beyond landscape. What follows are a few excerpts from this article by Dorota Kozinska; “When is a landscape not a landscape?”; “…the alchemy of art takes place in front of your very eyes”; “a celestial spectacle”; “…as if it were some kind of a conduit, spilling onto the canvas in a magnificent torrent of creativity”.

It is that type pf landscape (painting A) that we want you to paint, since you are the sole alchemist of your own life, not someone else. At Walk the Arts, we want you to paint celestial and countryside “spectacles”, not mere imitation of what you see in front of you. You are in Italy to reflect, to “spill onto” your canvas and we give the proper tools and setting for you to achieve this mission.

Now let’s be truly honest to ourselves: which painting is truly more interesting? A or B? Interesting meaning that our eye contact to the canvas is longer. For us, painting “A” since it underlies spirituality and imparts a “sense of transcendence, of a connection with the unseen”.

But we do understand that we have to be somewhere, at a precise time,  and painting “B” is indeed an excellent place. Congratulation Mme Beaudet!

Painting “B” by Beaudet Studio