Marc Dalessio

After 18 years in the Oltrarno of Florence, I’ve left Italy for a while. I’m currently living in Zagreb, Croatia and will be moving to Maastricht, Holland in February.

Here are some sketches from the center of Zagreb where I’ve been living the last few weeks.

The Cathedral from the Marketplace. 35 x 25 cm.

Frost, Mirogoj. 25 x 35 cm.

The Walls at Mirogoj. 35 x 25 cm.

Tkalčićeva Ulica. 30 x 20 cm

First Snow at Mirogoj. 20 x 30 cm.

Palmoticeva ulica. 30 x 20 cm.

Lotrščak Tower. 30 x 20 cm.

Zagreb. 25 x 35 cm.

The Bar at Zvijezda. 20 x 30 cm.

The Cathedral, Zagreb. 30 x 20 cm.

The walls at Villa Le Rose. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Winter has set in and pushed me indoors so I’m currently enlarging the small sketches from this summer for shows next year. This was the last batch of Tuscan plein air sketches from the warm October we had there. They are all painted at the beautiful Villa le Rose property just south of Florence.

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Daniela Astone and I just finished our back-to-back plein air courses in Chianti and the gulf of Baratti. We had 19 glorious days of sunshine during the two ten-day sessions. Here are a few of the sketches I managed to bat out during my time off from teaching.

Baratti Dawn. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

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I just got back from two weeks of plein air painting on one of the more beautiful estates in Italy. We were put up by a friend who asked me to invite excellent landscape painters from around the world for something of a symposium of painting. We had a good turn out: Ben Fenske, Jory Glazener, Joeseph McGurl, Edward Minoff, Rick Piloco and myself were the core group. Charles Cecil, Daniela Astone, and Mathilde van der Does de Willebois and Fiona Corsini came for shorter stays.

Here are some random photos from the trip.

We had perfect weather, great food and wine, excellent company, and it was one of the best seasons to paint in one of the more beautiful areas of the world. A resounding success all around.

Years ago I drove through the same valley where we stayed and always wanted to go back and paint there, so it was great to be offered this occasion in that exact spot.

Joseph McGurl is probably the contemporary landscape painter who had the most influence on my own work. I saw a show of his in New York when I was just starting out and it really made me see what was possible with landscape painting. It was great to be able to paint with him after all these years.

I’ll post photos of my paintings when I have a chance.

Here are a few recent larger landscapes. All done en plein air here in Italy.

Villa Argiano. 80 x 100 cm, oil on linen.

Benabbio. 80 x 100 cm, oil on linen.

Poggio delle Corti. 60 x 80 cm, oil on linen.

Sant'Angelo in Colle from Argiano. 80 x 100 cm, oil on linen.

Gualdo Cattaneo. 80 x 100 cm, oil on linen.

Bagni di Lucca. 60 x 100 cm, oil on linen.

Below are a few smaller sketches from a recent trip to Montalcino. I stayed at the beautiful Castello d’Argiano  and the reason there are no early morning paintings is due to their great hospitality and wonderful wines.

Montalcino, Sunset. 25 x 35 cm, oil on dibond.

Convento dell'Osservanza, Montalcino. 25 x 35 cm, oil on dibond.

Pieve di Santa Restituta. 25 x 35 cm, oil on dibond.

Castiglion d'Orcia. 20 x 30 cm, oil on dibond.

These are a few of the paintings I worked during my free time over the past ten days. The first is from the same spot where I painting the same large landscape ten years ago. I got a bit worried at one point, “What if my painting has gotten worse?”

The Marsiliana. Oil on linen, 80 x 100 cm.

The next three are all from the same spot, just playing around with different light effects.

The Entrance to the Marsiliana, Back-lit. Oil on linen, 50 x 70 cm.

The Entrance to the Marsiliana, Overcast. Oil on panel, 25 x 35 cm.

The Entrance to the Marsiliana, Side-lit. Oil on panel, 20 x 30 cm.

I also did a bunch of little sketches while doing demonstrations, but they didn’t make the cut.

Here are a few photos from our ten day plein air course at the beautiful Tenuta Marsiliana in southwestern Tuscany.  We’re trying to find the most picturesque spots in central Italy for these workshops.

Dawn painting at the Marsiliana.

On the road up to the castle.

A little ruined church we found nearby.

Plein air on Monte Argentario

Final critiques at the castle.

Overall the trip was a great success. We had a couple of bad days with the weather, but there was a quick portrait workshop to substitute.

Next year Daniela and I will start the workshops again in May to catch wheatfield season. Hopefully somewhere south of Siena. I’ll post the dates and details as soon as I find a suitable location.

Edward Seago. Strand on the Green, oil on masonite, 11 x 16 in.

I’ve always been a tremendous Anglophile, with a great reverence for all things English.

Edward Seago. Lotts Road Power Station, oil on canvas, 20 x 26 in.

As we all know, Constable was the first great plein air painter. The story of his placing the violin on a fresh green lawn to prove a point about the difference between the art market’s demand for brown, Rembrandtesque landscape paintings and his own observations about color has long influenced the acid greens in my painting.

Edward Seago. Ponza. 20 x 30 in. (thanks Bob!).

In the 20th century England produced some of the finest plein air painters anywhere. One of my favorites is Edward Seago. I was in London this weekend and saw many of his paintings in person in galleries around town. The variety of the paint handling is phenomenal, from heavy palette-knife impastos, to half-dry brush flicks on bare canvas, to glazes clearly done in the studio over dry paint. In person, it also looks like he either prepared his panels and canvases with heavy grounds, or he painted over old paintings, because a lot of the brushwork under the final layers doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the work we see.

They say there are 5 things you have to get right in painting: value, hue, chroma, edge and shape. When you look at Seagos in person you realize the power of paint handling and the importance of variety in the actual paint application.

Edward Seago. Centaur, Millie and Edith May, oil on board, 24 x 36 in.

Jeremy Taylor of the Taylor Gallery in London generously let me peruse his large collection of Seagos in person. And later, while looking around on the web, I found a number of good online archives of Seagos with searchable, zoomable, images. Christies, Sothebys and Richard Green for example.

Seago’s subject matter is also lots of fun as he didn’t shy away from contemporary subjects and it’s great to see the plein air views with cars from the ’40s and ’50s.

Edward Seago. Life Guards on the Mall, oil on canvas, 26 x 36 in.

I’m always trying to convince my students of the value of a low horizon line. Seago is a great example.

Edward Seago. Dordrecht, Holland, oil on board, 12 x 16 in.

Seago traveled extensively, painting from Hong Kong to the Antartic. His snowscapes from down south really make you feel cold, and the Royal Collection has a number of zoomable images online.

As a kid I lived for a few years in the Fiji Islands and have always had strong memories of the beauty of the place. Recently I was invited back for a wedding and jumped at the chance. We stayed on the east side of the main island, which wasn’t my old turf, but is probably the more picturesque side (and it is certainly the drier side).

Here are a few from Musket Cove Resort where the wedding party stayed, and Namotu Island Resort where we went for lunch a couple of times. Musket Cove is on a large island with lots of subject matter (well, mostly beaches and palm trees). Namotu is an amazingly beautiful little dot of sand next to some of the best surf breaks in Fiji.

From the Point, Manolo Lailai. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Airport Beach. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Boats at Musket Cove. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

Beach on Ratu Nemani Island. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

The Beach at Namotu. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Jet Ski at Namotu. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

I hope to get back soon with real equipment and do a focused painting trip (though that 23 hour flight in steerage is quite brutal).