I want to tell you about my first time, when I saw Italy and the Marche.
It was way back in June 2011 when I was almost 27 years old. I remember it like it was yesterday, in fact I still have goosebumps.
As I looked out the window of the bus that took me to Jesi, I felt the Marche landscape envelop me like a spell. The hills stretching out like waves and the blue sky that seemed to touch the earth. It was a moment of melancholy and nostalgia, and suddenly a song rings in my head: " In the blue painted blue , happy to be up there..."
Domenico Modugno's voice seems to accompany every bend in the road, every olive tree and every row of cypresses. As if the song were part of that landscape, a memory merges with the present. I close my eyes and let myself be transported back in time, when I heard the song for the first time, when I was just a little girl and Italy was just a distant dream.
Now while I paint the hills of the Marche, I try to capture that same feeling of lightness and freedom. While the brushes and chalks dance on the canvas, mixing the blue of the sky with the green of the vineyards and the yellow of the fields, the song continues to play in my mind, in the blue painted blue, and every brushstroke seems like a verse, a memory. I have created a bridge between my heart and the hills of the Marche, and through my paintings I invite you to do the same. That day left an indelible mark, and since then the hills of the Marche have become a source of inspiration for my works.
Today in a fast-paced world, I invite you to slow down and look beyond, to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us. The hills of the Marche through my eyes are a place of magic and poetry, an invitation to fly high just like the song in the blue painted blue. Perhaps, when you admire my works you will be able to smell the ripe wheat, the warmth of the sun on your skin and the sweet breeze that caresses the fields. Perhaps this is precisely the power of art: transforming melancholy into beauty, reliving memories through colors and shapes and even if time passes and things change, there are places and songs that remain with us forever like a painting that never fades.
cover image "Verdicchio" 2023 oil pastels on linen canvas.