discovering the calanche......

Although I have lived here for more than ten years and I knew the calanche were important I had never really seen them up close. Now I think I may have to explore them further and maybe  that is where i will start painting from life......................................so many things to learn................

think these shapes were made by the sea, the wind and the sun

weird landscape

this is spectacular when you are actually there.

mixed landscape

only 20 mins from my studio

one of many beautiful wild flowers

close up of the earth with orange and blue shadows

My "palace" in Pisticci

It has been such a joy to have my house back. No more flinching when I hear a particularly loud bang, no more plaster dropping from my roof into my studio, no more  wondering whether my house would survive - or indeed myself , and no more opening the door and being confronted by scaffolding

I can relax again........

I decided that I need to be nice to my little house and give it some TLC after its distressing experience.

So , I am never going to refer to it in a derogatory fashion again- no more apologising for it being an unrenovated house with a few defects.

Now it's an old and well loved building with a lot of history - which can be seen if you look closely.  It has been here , I think , for hundreds of years and lots of people have lived in it before me and hopefully more will after me.

I am lucky that it is not perfect because then I can be as imaginative as I like with it and I have some crazy plans for future decoration. No limits.

If the walls were perfect then I probably couldn't hang as many paintings on them- but I love living in a gallery and being surrounded by works of arts, portraits of family, old bedspreads. I love lots of colour!

I have so much space to play with and almost every part of the house I have painted or worked on myself or james has fixed is special. My painted fireplace with the roaring fire still makes me smile every time I look at it. The lovely yellow wall in my new sleeping chamber ( sounds more fun than a bed room.)  is a colour I mixed myself after I had been to Florence and seen it in an old cafe with crumbly walls and great atmosphere.

My gallery was painted a sort of orangey terracotta colour one night when I was in the mood for a change and fed up of white.  
The green door was symbolic- not just because it is a traditional colour here, but because I always used to want to blend in and not stand out  and was a bit timid so I changed it from brown to bright green in the hope that my personality would brighten up as well. ( worked a bit...)

Nearly everything in my house has a story.  The crazy tiling in my roman style shower room was decorated with sequins after I had seen a totally weird bathroom in a cafe in Matera.  Or the fridge freezer that a friend gave me several years ago which transformed my shopping life (I can buy ice cream.) and makes me think of her every time I open it.

There are 2 little soft chairs which came with the house, I re-covered them and sometimes I wonder who has sat on them before. They were the first chairs I had ever covered myself. And when I look round I see stories everywhere.

And outside my flowers are back at my door. I have bought some more to celebrate and I managed to save the plant that is growing round my door and  am very proud of it. My first yellow rose is out.(thanks Hans) my fig tree is not dead and quite a few of my plants are getting quite big. I was never a gardener so anything that survives me is a surprise. 

So apologies to my delightful little house/studio/palace and I will  never again refer to it as a shed. I will love the tinkling of raindrops into plastic boxes until I repair the roof again,  I will love the crumbly plaster because it lets me cover it with paintings and bright colours.

And found this old poem

let me grow lovely growing old

so many old things do

laces and ivory and gold

and silks need not be new

and there is healing in old trees

old streets a glamour hold,

why may not I as well as these,grow lovely growing old?

Half a Carnevale.......

I should have known better..............
The Carnevale was to start at 16.00. And I can't help it but be on time..................
So first of all went for a coffee and then after 45mins..... went for a walk.... and then another walk.......and then a prosecco in a circolo.......and then another walk and hey presto only 30 minutes later the carnevale arrived. I found myself a doorstep to stand on from which to take photos and all was going well.... I love  the whole feeling of carnevale, the sheer fun, and exuberance............but I can't cope with the noise- the bass!
So I was happily taking photos until a large lorry thing arrived, bass blasting and I thought I might well die if I didn't get out of the way.
So, unable to find the friends I was with I went home - resolving next year to  not to go on time!!!!
It is such a pity as now I think there is a party- but I am going to bed............must learn to get my timing better...............
However I did get some photos- one of which is really special.

A Very Good Day in Pisticci

It has been ages since I scootered all the way to Marconia but for some reason I decided to give it a go and drop in at the market. It was Saturday after all.
After checking the tyres (it has a slow puncture) I figured I had better go before I changed my mind.
I don't really like the road to marconia: its too narrow and the edges of a lot of the road are broken and full of holes which is quite dangerous for a scooter.
My scooter has in the past had a nasty habit of dying for no particular reason while going up hills and is making a sort of clicking noise at the minute.
However I set off and went relatively slowly  and avoided most of the pot holes, the tyre held out ,the engine kept going and I arrived . On the way I passed an elderly lady on a tricycle who I have seen often with an enormous amount of shopping- and even big heavy tiles on the back of her bike.  She was a bit of an inspiration.
It was a very nice day with a lovely blue sky- so after a coffee to recover from the journey it was great to have a look round the little market, have another coffee, miss the friends I thought I would see and then get back on the scooter and head for home.
It was so much more fun. on the way back  ...I stopped at one of my favourite shops and then at the little wine shop and dawdled back to Pisticci with fingers crossed that the engine would not die on the last hill.
What a wonderfully satisfying experience. May have to repeat it.....
Then the day got even better.
The IMBIANCHINI DI BELLEZZA are back  and painting Pisticci white - bits of it anyways. Was lovely to be part of something again and this time after some light wall painting  someone suggested we go for a walk in the calanche.
Even though I have been here for more than 10 years I didn't know that if I just went down a little road about 100mtrs from my house that it would lead into the calanche. I could attempt to describe what "calanche" are but I can't ,so there are photos. It was like another world.
But not only that .... to go with people who love this and were enthusiastic about their country and knew all about the reasons it was like this was beautiful. I have now realised that not understanding  some of what is said has probably made me more aware of how its said and  people's general attitudes. So I understood some things, didn't say much , but had a wonderful time. On the way back we sat down and waited for sunset.
And I saw fossils- lots of them.....Magical!
I arrived back at my house just as two ladies arrived who then bought a painting which meant a lot to them because of the people in it. It is such a privilege and pleasure to have made something that is special in that way.
Still smiling when I think about it all. It was a very good day indeed.

A Bad Dream in Pisticci......

I haven't written here for several  months now and a big part of the reason is that people have bought the apartment above me and are having it done up and it's driving me to distraction.
there is no soundproofing and so drilling, hammering, banging, scraping etc etc sound at worst like they are in my house and at best like my ceiling may fall down. (I have gone to look on numerous occasions because that is what it sounded like.) And to add to this there is now scaffolding right across the front of my house- so my nice little garden of plant pots had to be moved and there are large planks of wood resting on the other part of my house which builders use to stand on to fix the end wall of the apartment.  So far they only made one tiny hole in my roof (which they fixed as soon as I pointed it out.) but  trying to work while people are walking about virtually on my roof ( 2 layers of tiles between them and me) is actually a bit scary.
They began work after some false starts in november.  It was supposed to be finished by end of December, then end of January........
Most days work starts around 8am. They dont normally work at weekends, but they did one sunday. So since work started there is no chance of a lie in, no siestas, no peace to dream up new ideas and since mid january an ugly great big bit of scaffolding is the first thing I see when I go out my door.
Sometimes they have a day off - and even a week once - but as no one told me - I still got up really early so I could at least have my breakfast in peace. (
If I didn't work from home then it would be better- but I do work from home. So to make matters worse I am finding it very difficult to concentrate and am already late with several commissions. I had a lot of plans for new work to start in January as I really need to earn more. I have not had the space to start anything new.
Not having my creative/safe space is the most difficult thing to cope with.  I can do practical stuff but my imagination seems mostly to be concentrated on revenge fantasies and arguments in my head with various people. I am used to thinking that I am relatively tough and can generally find something  or some way to get round a problem but this is too close to home.
My home/studio was my safe place where I could retreat to and relax and create. It was where I felt secure. When I got a bit down I could paint or draw something and that always made me feel better.
I suppose this work upstairs will end sometime - though it doesn't look like it will be soon. And the people who ordered the work will have a lovely apartment, and the builders will get paid and I will get my house back just the same as it was before and  have to work twice as hard to make up for all the time that I couldn't work.
(I have tried- earphones - doesn't work, considered plein air painting- I hate painting outside - writing in cafes- that was a bit better- deciding to not work - got enormous bills from dentist, etc, etc so that was no good

- decided I will ignore noise- expended so much energy ignoring it that there was little left for work- decided to stay up all night and work, then realised I couldn't sleep through the day- move to another country- not enough money.)
I am not happy.
Well., having said  all that, the rest of life in Pisticci is still pretty good. The weather has been on the whole lovely- I can sit outside and read. I managed to get my scooter started again after 3 weeks off the road- and discovering that my driving licence had expired. ( and my ID card) I am still trying to pay my house tax which I went to pay on the first of december. I am going to a play in Italian on friday night which I expect miraculously to somehow understand and I expect by the summer this  horrible time will just feel like a bad dream.......

Primo anno degli Imbianchini......the first year of the white beauty painters

A Tale Of Two Mice,Dropping Bugs And A Frog...........

It all started one night when I was woken by  a noise sounding like something was under the bed..........
I thought it might be a lizard or gekko as I see them sometimes inside , but  I couldn't get back to sleep until I had cleared everything out from under the bed to make sure there was nothing there. Eventually I got back to sleep.
Next morning as I came into the kitchen two mice ran across the floor in front of me. Yeek!! I bravely ( no other option) rushed to the door and opened it, grabbed the broom and battered the cupboard under which they had run. This resulted in them both running out the door - and then one of them turned round and ran straight in again and back under the cupboard. More battering of cupboard ensued but that mouse was staying put.
This was the same day that my sister and brother in law were coming to visit.
So I found some traps and baited them with chocolate and cheese. Several hours later when I returned the cheese and chocolate had been  eaten but the traps hadn't snapped.  So I tried peanut butter......... several hours later and I had visions of this little mouse growing bigger by the hour as the peanut butter had gone and still the traps hadn't worked.
So going online I ordered a subsonic ray gun thingy which I could plug in and apparently made a noise which discouraged mice .
And I retreated to my artist's retreat for the night.
Next day I set off on my scooter to find something to fight back with. So I bought "mouse glue". It was the only thing available. I had to spread it on something like cardboard  with some food in the middle and the mouse would go to get the food and get stuck. (gross!!)
Then I found that I had sold a large painting from the cafe. So went to put another one in its place. Collected some more money from sale of my prints in the little alimentare .  ( prints sold have now paid for 2 months electricity.)
Then went to a meeting about public art which I was taking part in and really enjoyed being part of a group of artists.
Came home.
Checked the glue traps.Had caught a little mouse which was looking quite perky but stuck. Removed it as best I could and put it down the end of the street where it disappeared.
Shaking like a leaf I locked up.
Slept in artist's retreat again.
Next morning  bought mouse poison and got rid of the glue.
Then I started the big clean. I cleaned cupboards, threw out  5 black bin bags of books. hoovered under everywhere , put neat bleach under all the cupboards and down the back of the fridge, cooker and washing machine - all the time dreading I might find a nest of mice. Oh yuck!!!!
Didn't find anything except some nibbled napkins.
That same day I got invited t

was nice to have company when painting

new more mouseproof furniture

finished!

maria grazia

lino

vito antonio

antonella

Pietrapertosa

white beauty painters....

painting the roofs

work in progress

o a wedding - and my artist's retreat is going to be used in some way during the wedding.
Slept at artist's retreat.
Next day went to Aliano and Alianello with my sister. Was so great to go out together and I have been wanting to go to Aliano since I read Carlo Levi's book  (Christ stopped at Eboli.)about 9 years ago. Was very hot and amazing.We drove through the "calanche" and it was like being in another world.
Then I got a booking for 2 nights for the artist's retreat from the  next day......
I can't say I was ready to move back to the studio but I couldn't really turn down the money.
So slept at artist's retreat again for the last night.
Next day I moved my stuff back into the studio , cleaned artist's retreat, got ready for the public art project (painting pictures on walls) and welcomed guests, then went to Marconia to start painting on a wall.  It was fun- usual unexpected problems- which got fixed- but that's another story- and we got started.
Got the bus home.
Carefully opened door to studio and much stamping of feet.
Slept in studio- not very well as woke up with every little noise.
Next day , tidied all day before going to marconia to paint on the wall.  Didnt get on very well and had to stop as there was a strong wind and my stuff got repeatedly blown away. Managed to fit in  visiting two art exhibitions while I was there.
Home on the bus. Much stamping of feet as I entered studio again.....
Slept in in studio- a little better.
Next day , got more orgainsed for wall painting, almost finished the "mousekeeping". Said goodbye to guests, tidied up and welcomed next one.
Slept in studio.
Next morning went to marconia on the early bus and got on much better painting on the wall without the wind.  Much aided also by chocolate cornetto and coffee.  Was a fun morning indeed.
On way back scooter was losing power so  mechanic took it away.
Decided to go to a small feste in the evening but after sitting through the church bit I was driven away by very ,very loud band. So never did hear the main singer.
On way home dropped in on american friends who had just arrived.
Much stamping of feet as I returned to studio. No sign of my subsonic ray gun thingy yet. ( no sign of any mice either.)
Slept in studio. A little better.
Off to Marconia on the bus again and fuelled by coffee and cornetto am  getting on at speed with my painting. Got lots of interest and people stopping to talk.
Back home was getting almost relaxed until I looked behind the cooker and something had been eating the mouse poison.
After investigating  with a torch I actually think ants have been eating it...
That evening I was invited out for a meal with american friends. It was spectacular.
Almost forgot to stamp feet when arriving back in studio
Next day got up early and moved furniture and then painted the wall behind it. Am getting some furniture that was to have been thrown out from the apartment above.  It means more of my stuff can be laid away safely from marauding mice or my latest problem - dropping bugs.  Have had to move my desk twice as they kept falling on it. Very disconcerting!
Other than that had a fairly quiet day.
Oh , and my subsonic ray gun thingy arrived and is now plugged in and hopefully scaring mice away from my studio.
Only waking up with the louder noises in my studio.
Got up and went to Marconia  on the bus again. My scooter is repaired so I scooter to the bus station and catch the bus. Am quite enjoying this.
Painting went well.
As it was the feste in Marconia that night I decided to return again in the evening and put some finishing touches to the painting and have a walk round the street market.  I had a great evening and I think I may have 2 commissions for portraits.
Came home on the bus and had a relaxing evening watching tv before going to bed.
Feeling a little more at home in studio  but still a little on edge.
Next day my guest left , so I tidied up before next guests who are arriving the next day.
Sunday now and my new furniture was delivered.  I varnished it a little darker and am now quite pleased with it.
Then i went out looking at property for sale with a friend So many properties for sale here. not expensive.
In the evening my next guests/friends arrived and we all went to the last night of the feste in Marconia.
Now am sleeping more or less normally in my studio- but thanks to the mice I have not done any painting here for more than 2 weeks.
So next day I started a portrait which was  commissioned while I was painting on the wall. And in between doing that I painted my old wardrobe to match my new furniture. and in the evening sat out in the street with my new guests and some neighbours drinking wine and chatting. I left before the grappa.
Actually enjoying my studio again- though looking forward to the end of the dropping bug season.  Took a brush outside tonight and brushed them all off the outside wall. I assume they climb up , then in some holes in the roof and then drop!
Next day- worked on portrait and then went out in evening with friends.
My studio is looking so pretty- especially the bedroom/living room.
more work on the portrait, a bit of evening socialising with friends and then as i was going to bed a strange noise.......
A frog the size of a teacup was sitting looking at me in my little gallery.
I opened the door but it squished under the cupboard. I have not seen it since.
Next day  I went to Pietrapertosa with friends. It was gorgeous.  A wonderful day out.
I then got another portrait commission, had another pleasant evening drinking wine with friends.
Slept in studio with no sign of frogs or mice.
Painted portrait all next day and then went out for lovely meal in the evening.
And yesterday said goodbye to my two new friends, who i hope to see again. And went to what i thought was going to be a history lesson but instead was the white beauty painters, with tv camera and cake.
I think it might now be the end of my social life for the summer, am hoping its the end of the mice, the dropping bugs seem to be decreasing and with any luck the frog left while I wasn't looking.
It's been quite a summer........