Marc Dalessio

Continuing the theme of brilliant regional painters from the Californian school post below. There is a Telemaco Signorini show in Padua at the moment which I am really looking forward to seeing. Signorini has always been one of my favorite plein air painters both for his superb painting technique and the wit he instills in his best work. Such as the play of the bright colors of the advertising billboard above contrasted with the greys and browns of the Scottish town, the lone dog on the wall in End of August at Pietramala below, and the contrasting of the various levels of human endeavor between the humble, transitory vegetable garden and the grand, immutable silhouette of the Duomo in (a painting I haven’t been able to find an image of and can’t remember the title!).

Signorini is probably the greatest painter of the Italian light, from the dirty summer skies contrasted with bright sun-lit roads, to his exceptional rendering of the long grey autumn and winter evenings. His draftsmanship is superb, and often in the small unfinished sketches you can see how everything was meticulously drawn in pencil before he started (Paxton recounted seeing Sargent do this as well with his seemingly freehand Venetian watercolors). Signorini’s brushwork and, often, palette-knife-work is always varied and unexpected, and I would be curious to know what medium he used as the variety of edge is really impressive, from the long soft gradations of the foliage and shadows, to his razor-sharp roofs and palm fronds.

Also, the museums in Italy are all free this weekend. I just spent an hour looking at the Signorini at the Pitti Modern and was the only one in the place the whole time.

I’ve posted the summer plein air workshop schedule on the ‘courses’ page on my website.  Every year I take three students on weekends in June and July. We stay in a small Tuscan farmhouse about 40 minutes from Florence near Tavarnelle val di Pesa. Places are already filling up, so if you know you’ll be in Tuscany and would like to take an intensive plein air landscape painting workshop, shoot me an email and I’ll save you a spot. The house is charming but not luxurious (there is often a young family with us), and the focus of the weekend is on painting. You can click forward on the calendar below to see the dates.

There is also the possibility of using a house by the beach in Maremma in June if I get enough interest.

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I haven’t been out landscape painting this Autumn as much as I would have liked. The image above is an HDR photograph, but it gives an idea of the colors here in Tuscany at the moment.

Here is a short timelapse of a sketch for a commission up near Barberino val d’Elsa. Its a 17th century copy of the Duomo of Florence in the middle of the countryside, people often think I’m dabbling in surrealism when they see the paintings, but its really there.

Don’t try this at home. Some blogs do a painting-a-day, I was given a house last week for 4 days and tried to make as most out of it as possible by painting as many small sketches in a day as I could. I thought I would go for ten a day. This seemed easy as the estate where I was painting is in an especially picturesque part of the upper Maremma, and I was very inspired by the landscape. I ended up working from 7:30-ish in the morning until 11 pm at night (there was a full moon, so I could paint at night).

Unfortunately I have the habit of holding my brushes with my left hand while I work, and as I painted over the course of the day I kept grabbing clean brushes while continuing to hold the old ones. By the end of the day I had held a huge mass of brushes in my hand for hours and that night I came down with severe tendinitis and a terrible fever which lasted 4 days. It still hurts today as I type, almost a week later.

Clever. Anyways, here are some of the sketches:

I’ve been updating my landscape archive page on Flickr with spots to paint in Maremma. The Val di Cecina is especially beautiful. Here is the webpage again.

Here is the original post if you have no idea what I’m talking about.

I had intended on focusing more on my teaching this year. All things considered however, I still managed to get a lot done.

I’m quite pleased with my Florentine paintings this year. For years I haven’t painted seriously in the city as I felt somewhat bored of the views I see everyday. Then I got a commission to paint Piazza Tasso, which is not considered the most beautiful piazza in Florence, but it has a special meaning to me so I was very happy to be asked to capture it on canvas. Here is an image: 

The painting was quite successful (I felt, and the clients were happy). An antiquarian saw this in a small show I had and asked me to do a series of ‘unusual’ Florentine scenes for a show this October. The work is at the photographers at the moment, but I’ll try to post more when the images come back. The gallery website would not appear to be up and running at the moment…

I’ve been trying to work larger outdoors. With today’s modern conveniences, we should have less trouble moving our equipment around. I was always impressed with the photos of Sorolla painting on his massive canvases with large wooden structures to protect them from the wind.

My idea now is to have an easel made that I can attach to the side of my car. I already use the car all the time as a windbreak as it is so tall, now I just need a way to attach a canvas to the side…

Here is an image of the final painting:

I spend a lot of time driving around the Tuscan countryside every summer looking for great spots to paint.

An ongoing project of mine is to take a picture from every spot I find which I think is especially picturesque. The camera on my cellphone is set to automatically check the built-in gps system to see where I am in the world, and the phone is set to automatically upload my landscape photos to a Flickr set. Flickr can then parse the location data in the photo and place it on a map.

Another painter can then check my ‘landscape archive’ map on Flickr to see if any of the views interest them.

At the moment there are just a few practice shots up, but over the next couple months the map should fill up.

(The phone is a Nokia N82, if anyone was curious).

This is a project I’ve wanted to work on for a while. An outdoor, full length self-portrait at midday in the summer. Lots of light everywhere.

At the moment I’m working on the composition and trying to figure out problems which will arise with the larger version.

Here are some early photos (cellphone camera):