Almost all my wine bottle paintings sold at the Wine Cabinet art show/wine tasting event last Friday, which is great, although now the wine importing company for which some were painted will have to wait until I am inspired to create more (Sorry, Mariana.).  To change things up a bit this week though, I started a new series, tentatively titled “Boys’ Shoes.” I might concentrate on soccer cleats or I might include the great variety of worn-out boy shoes lying about the house. Here are two paintings, still works in progress, but with great potential. Soccer Shoes No. 1 (right) is huge– 18″ x 24″, while Soccer Shoes No. 2 (bottom) is 10″ x 10″. Even worn out shoes, having provided all that hard service to the athlete, deserve a turn in the spot light, right?

I’ve been commissioned by a US wine importing company to create a series of artwork for their offices and was inspired to develop paintings based on the common theme of wine.  I ended up having a lot of fun with the reflections, silhouettes, colors, and shapes of wine bottles. This Friday I am conducting a painting demonstration and showing some of the latest in my series of wine paintings at the Wine Cabinet in Reston, VA from 5 to 8. My friend and colleage, Beth Wolfe, will show and taste out wines from Piemonte, including those from my own vineyard. Stop by to see us if you can. (Click over to the Paintings page to view more paintings and actual painting sizes, prices, and medium.) (The Wine Cabinet, 1416 North Point Village Center, Reston, VA 20194)

I made the mistake of perusing photos from last year and got a little homesick for the vineyard. The landscape in the Langhe is particularly beautiful in the winter. The Alps show up  frequently in the distance and the nebbia (fog) wanders through our valley and fields. So I resolved this Christmas season to capture the Langhe landscape with some good-sized paintings. This is a big departure for me, both painting big and painting from photos. Here is my first, just completed.

“Vineyard in Winter, Italy” 24″ x 36″, oil on linen

“Red Pitcher & Oranges”

6″ x 6″, oil on museum quality panel, © Mary Beth Gaiarin 2012
November 4, 2012

Friday I brought five of my paintings to a cool little wine shop in Clifton, VA, called the Clifton Wine Shop. Lucinda, the owner, is going to hang them in the store and in her classroom, where she conducts her wine classes. I couldn’t ask for a better showcase for my work since the shop, located right next to abandoned train tracks, is in an old building with low ceilings and bumpy, whitewashed walls. It reminds me a of our old farmhouse in Italy where I painted these pieces. Lucinda is terrific and she makes wine tasting and purchasing fun. I am really pleased to be part of her wine world. (Thank you, Julie Sapone, for setting this up.)

This week I am taking an intensive five day figure workshop with Studio Incamminati, a prestigious art school located in Philadelphia. The great thing is that I have to only drive up the road to the Great Falls Art Studio to attend– Studio Incamminati is sending a teacher to us for the week. In the meantime, here is another little painting I did of what I consider my extremely whimsical wine pitcher from Switzerland. The little white roses just hung on so I thought I’d try a similar setup only looser and quicker than the previous little painting I posted for bid.  I even painted over an old painting in order to have some texture and brushstrokes already in place. I am working to loosen up my technique, which is the direction I want to go in with my painting overall. Let me know what you think.

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“Ticino Pitcher”

6″ x 6″, oil on museum quality panel, © Mary Beth Gaiarin 2011
October 30, 2012

When you order wine in the grotti in Ticino, the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, they often bring it to you in these quaint little pitchers, which you empty immediately. Since most grotti are only open in the summer months in Ticino, I thought it would be nice to paint a cheerful reminder of warmer, easier days as we settled in yesterday to wait out whatever Hurricane Sandy was bringing us.

As a way to get back into the swing of life in Virginia, I am going to post a small painting for auction every few days, as I did last fall. Please feel free to forward the link to my blog or auction to anyone who may be interested. Daily painting is key for becoming a better painter– so along with the fun of posting and having bids on my work, it is a great discipline for me.

For all you foodies out there, 15 year old son Ben Gaiarin is continuing his food blog. He is now working on it for his MYP personal project as he pursues the IB diploma at his new high school. If you haven’t done so, you might want to check it out, his food photos are amazing and his writing is charming.  bengusto.com

The family and I moved back to our house in northern Virginia last month. Older son, Alex, wanted to attend his beloved American high school for his senior year, and younger son, Ben, wanted to experience a big American high school for his first time. It has been a chaotic re-entry, but hopefully things will settle down soon.

What do we miss about Italy? The food; our neighbors;  our friends; our view; our vineyard; church bells; the morning, afternoon, evening light. What do we heartily appreciate here in the US? The ease of purchasing stuff– stores are always open– even during the lunch hours; We can use a credit card everywhere (even to buy a coffee); the public library; cheerful, kind checkers at the grocery store; gas stations ALWAYS have gas; cheap gas; NPR; we are never asked to make exact change; we can buy wrapping paper AND aspirin at the supermarket; no church bells; regular mail service; our neighbors; our friends… the list would go on, but I’ll leave it there for now.

Some of the paintings I worked on this past summer are being hung this Monday in the Wine Cabinet, a wine shop in Reston, VA. Here are a few of the pieces going over to the Wine Cabinet this week.

This past June my younger son Ben got himself an unpaid internship in a restaurant in our little village in Treiso only to find out, when he went to the government office to complete the medical exam and paperwork (yes, you need a state medical exam to get a job here in Italy), that Italian law prohibits him from working, paid or unpaid, until he is 16. So Ben dedicated himself to an independent study this summer, when he wasn’t soccer training, learning to cook, and bake, and experimenting with recipes. He has done things like visiting a traditional Sicilian bread bakery and spending the day making gelato in the best ice cream shop in Alba. He is keeping a blog about his experience and he would love it if you would check it out… www.bengusto.com.

White Grapes & Roses, 5 x 7 oil on panel

I find setting up still lifes and figuring out angles and lighting to be a challenging part of painting, so I study other artists’ works for inspiration. Last week I had a good time perusing images of Cezanne’s paintings on the internet, just studying his lighting and composition. I also looked for a long time at my teacher/mentor, Jill Bank’s, website since she is also a master in composition, among many other things (www.jillbanks.com).  So, with some fresh ideas, I set the still life up between two windows in my kitchen, in front of my antique iron fireplace panel and put a light on it. It so happened that a storm rolled in towards the late afternoon (no hail!) and I ended up painting practically in the dark but the lighting on the flowers became so dramatic and interesting that I kept going.

This morning we are off to Sicily– a place I have never been!

Our grapes are happy and ripening nicely. Although a new pest arrived in the Langhe and we have to rip out several rows of vines in the lower western vineyard after harvest, we have so far eluded grapes’ dreaded nemesis– hail. If I were a true blue solidly superstitious Italian I wouldn’t be saying this, but we have been lucky with our crops this summer. Our growers consortium operates hail cannons to smash hail forming in the atmosphere. Some of our neighbor farmers mutter skeptically and grape growers I meet in other regions sometimes scoff at us, but the other day we were offered good reason to appreciate our cannons. As Manu drove home through the Asti region he was caught in a storm that pitched hail the size of golf balls. When he arrived at our vineyard the storm was just looming in the distance down the valley. We watched the storm rage toward our hill, felt the ambient temperature sink, and heard the faraway cannons firing; a new cannon adding its voice to the cacophony every few minutes. The storm and “warfare” sounds built to a crescendo and the powerful cannon booming combined with the visual and audible spectacle of the storm was eerie and unsettling. When the storm hovered above our vineyard our shiny new cannon, which the consortium built just last year at the bottom of our hill, started firing. I saw two or three hail pieces bounce on our patio, and then… nothing! Just rain.  So maybe the cannons are effective. Either way, they sure add drama to the powerful storms that sail down our valley.

Summer brings new chores and more travel but I am working artistically almost every day either with water color, oil, or sketching. Last week I added to my series of still lifes featuring the antique farm kitchen pieces that I collect from Italian and French junk shops. Here are two, with a tiny painting that shows our own apricots in my glazed earthenware bowl.

On Monday I walked up the hill towards Treiso and painted from my neighbor’s vineyard. It is peaceful painting among the grapevines, in the shade of a tree, with the cicadas singing.