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A record of Jan Windle's work in Europe and Britain, collecting subjects for her paintings and prints.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Christmas in Barcelona

This is the diary that I kept when I went to Barcelona on my own over Christmas 2006. 

Sunday 24th December 2006 If you decide to spend Christmas on your own, you cannot choose a better place to spend it than Barcelona. Unless you want continuous wall -to -wall sunshine and then you go to the Canaries or even better, the Maldives. But Barcelona will do for me. I arrived on Christmas Eve. It was cold and grey, though warmer than the weather I had left at home. Having booked into my hotel, right by the old Cathedral, I spent the afternoon drawing outside one of Gaudi’s lovely buildings, the Music Institute, festooned with Wagneresque statuary and arabesques. I endured the usual verdict of the local inhabitants, that it would be much more sensible to just take a photo like everyone else, with good grace.
I went on to get lost in the Gothic quarter until nearly midnight, and found my way back safely with bag intact despite all the gloomy predictions of my friends about muggings and so on. I had had found a restaurant in the Placa Real, enjoyed a delicious snack of patates bravas and fresh herrings and red wine, and practised making myself understood in a mixture of Italian, Spanish and sign language.
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Monday 25th December 2006
Today, Christmas Day, I woke to brilliant sunshine and spent the day exploring the city, getting lost, inevitably, but for me that is the best way to get to know a place. In the afternoon I settled down outside a restaurant at the Vell Port at Mare Magnum where I drew the undulating curves of the bridge back to the main city, the baroque entrance to the port and the endless procession of people on holiday on their way over to and from the waterfront.
I met a charming couple, Andrew and Jodie, who live in Belsize Park, London, but are from Australia, and a fellow spirit, a German lady based in France whose name I did not ask. Like me, she was on a mission to escape Christmas and had found a haven in Barcelona for a few days. We agreed that Christmas was overrated as a holiday and that most of us did not need it. If you are a close family, you have that intimacy all the year round. Christmas is an unnecessary stress, actively cruel to those who are, or who feel, alone. Having said which, this has been one of the best Christmas Days I have had. I even topped up my suntan.......
I was talking and listening too much to finish my drawing, but I got my priorities right.
Tomorrow, the Sagrada Familia and other Gaudi masterpieces are in store for me. _______________________________________________________ Tuesday 26th December 2006 I am writing this in the evening - only more whole day left in Barcelona. I leave on Thursday evening. This morning I woke to another bright sunny day, though colder than yesterday. I found out today what an efficient and cheap metro system Barcelona has, when I went to the Sagrada Familia. I didn't get lost, so I had time to do two drawings, one at the front and one at the back of the cathedral. It really is an awesome sight. I got so carried away with the drawing, and so hungry after the first one, that I didn't realise till too late that it closes at 2pm in the winter. So I will have to go back tomorrow and go inside.
I only had one conversation today and that was with the owner, I think, of the little eating place near the Sagrada Familia where I had lunch. In a combination of Italian, Spanish and French we established that he came from Ibiza which is the best place on the whole planet. My language skills were not up to any meaningful discussion of this proposition so we left it at that. The paella was overcooked, the wine was vastly overpriced and they charged me for bread that I had not asked for, but apart from that he ran a good place, if indeed he was the owner, which I am not sure we established.....
After lunch, finding that the Sagrada Familia was closed, I walked round to look at the other side of the building and found that it is a more modern but still surreal piece of architecture. I sat in the cafe outside and drew it. It is an amazing angular version of Gothic design - like everything else about the cathedral it is still a work in progress but very striking. My drawing did not really do it justice - it needs a large canvas and perhaps I shall use my sketch and photos to make a painting of it when I get back home. In the evening I bought some silver earrings for myself and a belt for a friend of mine, at the stalls on the Rambla and then had a delicious three course meal with wine at the Ambos Mundos restaurant in the Placa Real, off there, which was proportionately a lot more reasonably priced and was excellent. I had been there for tapas on Christmas Eve and thought it was promising. I was not disappointed. Good fast friendly service too.
There are street entertainers everywhere and this cheerful trio came busking round the Plaza Real. There are living sculptures everywhere you look, too. I saw one setting up his pitch this morning and reget not having photographed him, it was such a strange sight to see his identity disappear under a layer of bronze makeup. There were dancers, jugglers and puppeteers there, morning and evening, though not at siesta time of course.
Las Ramblas are wide, busy thoroughfares with traffic restricted to narrow lanes on each side of the broad pedestrian walkways lined with cafes and stalls.
In the square outside Barcelona Cathedral there are street stalls over Christmas, selling an amazing array of (mostly) tat, but it would probably command higher prices on Ebay than the very cheap ones that traders were asking here - probably I missed some priceless bargains. But I am not good at spotting the difference between tat and collectibles and already have a loft full of stuff that I have no room to display, so I just browsed and enjoyed the atmosphere.
Must go to the street that my German kindred spirit told me about yesterday where Gaudi's other big houses are to be seen. It is on the number 24 bus route but I can walk there from my hotel. I shall try to do it tomorrow, as well as getting into the Sagrada Familia. I could see the people up on the walkways on the Gaudi cathedral when I was drawing today, like ants on a sandcastle. Must get up there myself. Being a tourist is fun.
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Wednesday 27th December 2006
Still in Barcelona but today was my last full day. Lovely clear skies again. Not looking forward to going back to what I suspect is dark and damp weather at home. Today I spent my entire allocation of money for the day, very little of it on food and none on wine, a first. I bought a pair of boots. The 10 euro entry to the Sagrada Familia including the lift. And finally a book.
But first I went back to the Sagrada Familia in the morning and found it stayed open all day. It must have closed early for Boxing Day, not called that here but the same thing. On my way to the metro I saw the entrance to St Josep's market and went in, attracted by the brilliant colours and textures I could see inside the the high covered area. Later I relised how relevant this diversion was to my understanding of Gaudi's art. I'll let my photos explain.
When I got into the cathedral precinct (there was a queue but it moved pretty fast) I perched outside the Gaudi frontage where the Nativity story is carved in every detail along with sea creatures, bones, doves, foliage, animals and angels, crags, lilies - everything that curves or leans or slants or blossoms or burgeons, it's all there on that frontage.
I drew the centre section, up over the main door, while I waited for the queue for the lift to the walkway across the roof of the building to get a bit shorter. Four hours. Well, it's a complicated thing to draw. And towards the end of the third hour, when the drawing was really motoring, I met several very nice people, mostly Spanish or French, with whom conversation was limited by my feeble attempts at their languages coming out as a melange of both, flavoured with Italian. There were some lovely children who were honestly puzzled as to what I was actually drawing. And I met one great family from Dundee who were very encouraging and we had a long chat.
Very stiff after sitting in the cold for so long, I went into the cathedral and was overwhelmed by the beautiful ceiling and the coloured light streaming through the stained glass windows on to the pillars supporting it.
I did go up to the roof at last and it was well worth the wait, to be up there looking over all Barcelona bathed in a golden glow.
Back on the Metro to the Passeig des Gracies, a spot of paella and a glass of water - very abstemious today - and then I walked along to look at the other famous Gaudi buildings on that broad avenue.
In one of them I found an exhibition of the sculpture of Gargallo, a contemporary of Picasso whose work I didn't know. It was very good. I liked the work so much that I bought the catalogue, even though it is almost entirely writtten in Spanish. The pictures are excellent. I like this kind of souvenir, even though it costs about ten times as much as a plastic model of the Sagrada Familia would have done.
Finally I walked back through the crowds, savouring the noise, the lights and the sense of spontaneous pleasure that the evening streets here hold. Another good day in Barcelona.­­­­­­­­­­­­­­
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Friday 29th December 2006 Here I am, back in England, in mourning for the sun. I gather that the sun was out over Christmas here too – this always seems to happen when I leave the country, usually resulting in a heatwave during the summer when I go to Italy. Now that I'm back it's ten o'clock in the morning and barely light, the rain lashing the windows and the bamboos in the garden getting ready for the next cyclone to hit us.
I had a good day in Barcelona yesterday, though. Lost (or at least off my pre-planned track) again, I found my way up to Montjuic, the hill behind the waterfront, up the back way to the grounds of the Miramar and had my most expensive coffee of the whole trip on the terrace of a café overlooking the harbour and the whole city towards the Segrada Familia and beyond. I did the proper thing – had myself photographed by a kind Japanese fellow tourist – then gave in to my usual weakness and settled down to make a pen and ink drawing of the view. I had to get value out of that coffee. And the sun was so warm.
On I went to the Joan Miro' museum further round the hill. This was an eye-opener for me because I had only seen his little paintings before. Here were some vast pieces- one is a huge tapestry and I couldn't resist getting another photo of myself, with this amazing work next to me. I thoroughly disapprove of this kind of behaviour from tourists but I caught the mood of the place – everyone was snapping pics of themselves cuddling the sculptures and one lady nearly knocked a bronze off its pedestal altogether! I couldn't believe my eyes, being used to the eagle-eyed fascisti who guard British galleries, who certainly do not allow photography, let alone sculpture stroking! It's a lovely gallery, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys colour, imaginative reconstructions of figures and faces, and the airy light atmosphere in which they are displayed.
I intended to go into the Museum of Catalonian Art, a very grandiose palace at the far end of the Montjuic, overlooking the Placa Espanol with its tall towers and formal promenade. I walked there through the lovely gardens that cover the hill, which are studded with statues and fountains at every turn. But by the time I got there it was getting late and I was due to go to the airport by 6pm.
I was all arted out, anyway, and the sun was still shining so I got myself photographed again (it was becoming an addiction I think), walked down to the Placa Espagnol and caught the Metro back to La Rambla. I looked dutifully for the Gaudi Pau Guell but couldn't find it so I settled for a last dish of patates bravas and a Catalan salad before catching the bus to the airport.
I have been making new Myspace friends for the last four days, thanks to the hotel' s Internet provision. It was a very good hotel, friendly, very stylish but comfortable, called the Hotel Barcelona Cathedral, right by the Cathedral in the Gothic quarter. I booked it through BA. A local man told me that to book there normally costs 280 euros a night but BA did it for £70 for the room. That would have been cheap if two had been sharing. One of the penalties of travelling alone. But on this trip I was reminded of the many pleasures of travelling solo. Looking forward to my next one – to Positano in March.
January 2007
I have begun to use the photos I took at Christmas to make large collages. This one is over A1 size and I shall use it in a number of ways, to form the basis of drawings, oil paintings and probably when I have explored it in this state (a raw collage on gloss paper) I shall draw over the top of it with oil crayon, which "takes" very well on gloss photographic paper.
If you would like to see the other work I do you will find it at www.janwindle.com

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Drawing Sorrento (2): a maturing relationship



After my first solo visit to Sorrento, in a cool week in April 2005, I began to book cheap flights to Naples, always through British Airways, whenever the grey life of England seemed to be closing in on me. I always knew that I had that eticket tucked away, like a forbidden bar of chocolate, in a drawer, ready to whisk me off to the Mediterrranean. Though perhaps "whisk" is not quite the word - I always travel on that morning flight for which you have to be at the airport at 5am or so, even earlier now....

My summer visit in 2005 was for 23 days - and I really learned my way around in that time. The buses, trains and boats took me up and down the coast with my sketch book and camera, always returning to Sorrento in the evenings to go to my favourite restaurant that year, a place called "L'Osteria del Buon'Aventuro" This old building off the Piazza San Fancesco housed a ristorante in which the manager, Nello, was flanked by two other middle aged Neapolitans, Renato and Antonio, who provided the live entertainment for tourists and others several nights of the week.

I first wandered in there one evening in August when every other place was full or booked. I was welcomed enthusiastically because l'Osteria is off the main thoroughfare, up a side alley, and gets little passing trade. Nello, as the English speaker who had worked in London for some time in the '80s, was the barker who stood outside ushering potential clients down into the wood panelled stone vaulted cellar which housed the restaurant. I normally resist this kind of invitation but I was very hungry that first evening.

I decided to eat at one of the tables that stood outside, however, because it looked hot and crowded downstairs. There on that first evening I met a charming Irish couple who became the first buyers of my Sorrento pictures. They opted to buy two of the originals, rather than the cheaper prints, and I was pleased to sell to such an appreciative couple - they told me exactly where they would site the framed pictures in their house.

In the hot dusty evenings of Sorrento in August I would sit at my table on the pavement outside L'Osteria and order the specialities of the house: heaped plates of mussels - they did the best steamed mussels in Sorrento; tomato salads scattered with aromatic basil leaves; prawns; grilled courgettes and aubergines and fresh sardines. The view was not conventionally romantic but it was very Southern Italian - a peeling stuccoed wall with an arched gate through which you could just see some orange trees, and a row of scooters.

At about ten o'clock in the evening there would be a rasping, clattering sound and Antonio would drive his battered car into the alley and park it, swiftly, accurately and with a flourish, in a space next to the wall which allowed about 3 centimetres' leeway. He would loop a chain around it for some reason - perhaps it didn't have a lock.

Usually Renato would already be in the resturant downstairs, performing for the clients. Renato was a guitarist and a good one. He played old and new Neapolitan songs, Sinatra and Dean Martin favourites, Beatles songs, and was the typical "You hum it and I'll play along with it" kind of musician. It was something of a relief when Antonio arrived, however, because Renato was no singer and Antonio had a magnificent tenor voice that drowned Renato out altogether.

As August wore on, I ventured downstairs and began having my solitary dinner at one of the gold brocade covered tables facing the entrance to the cellar from the street. This table became "mine" and I was treated as a regular, which I had become. Nello's beautiful sixteen year old daughter would serve me and ask what I had drawn that day, because I always had my sketch book with me. One evening I drew a portrait of her as she dashed about serving and calling orders in her husky smoker's voice (I had seen her with her taking cigarette breaks when I sat outside). I gave it to her and then I had to do a picture of Renato as well, who swore undying love if I would do so.

I finally brought my paints in on a quiet night and painted a scene of the interior, with Renato and Antonio playing and singing, Nadia the Croatian girl who ran the till and Nello's daughter in the background. In the foreground, of course, the gold brocade table cloth and my glass of red wine. I gave it to Nello and I don't know what happened to it later.

When I went back to the Osteria the following summer, it was under new management. The plates of mussels were much smaller and there were some among them that had failed to open (a dangerous sign, as all mussel aficionados know). Renato was nowhere to be seen and no one knoew where he had gone to, though Antonio turned up as usual and promised to put Nello in touch with me. To my surprise, he did, and a day or two later Nello bought me dinner at another resturant in which he had friends. He hinted at a story of betrayal and disappointment, with many shrugs and sideways looks, which apparently explained why he no longer ran l'Osteria dell'Bouon'Aventura.

I am sorry that I can't here include a drawing from my time as a regular at the Osteria, but I gave all of them to the people who formed their subjects. After their first surprise that I stayed so long in Sorrento on my own, they welcomed me and included me in their sessions of music and song, as far as my limited Italian and their limited English would allow. I can list among the most embarrassing moments of my entire life my rendition of "Yesterday" to the crowded restaurant, one Wednesday evening.



It was in August 2005 that I first went on the ferry to Capri from Sorrento. The atmosphere was hot, dusty, unreasonably crowded and anything but picturesque when I arrived at the top of the funicular railway that runs up from the port to Capri town. I was not in a very forgiving mood, either, because I had had to point out to the boy in the biglietteria for the funicular that I had given him a twenty euro note, not one for ten. This was the first time that I had been treated like that in this area and I felt let down. I wondered how many other times it had happened without my noticing - but I preferred to believe that it was a symptom of the frenetic commercialisation that permeated the atmosphere of Capri.

Capri is naturally beautiful, a large island with a plateau at its centre and great sweeping cliffs rising from the shores. I have only been there for one afternoon in three summers, so little did I enjoy trailing around with a thousand other foreigners among the fashionable shops in Capri town. It was difficult to find the path to the Villa Jovis on the cliff overlooking Capri town and by the time I started up the steep track it was late in the afternoon. I couldn't face the climb and settled for a photograph across to the cliff from the terrace outside the fiunicular. The villa was built by the Roman Emperor Nero and is in a fine defensive position. The path is steep and winding and I've promised myself that I shall go there in a cool season and climb up to admire the view, but I have been sidetracked each year by my explorations of the mainland coast towns.



This is the gouache painting that I made when I went back to England, from the photographs I took that day. I've called it "Bougainvillea, Capri" because the flowers and the lovely earthenware pot they are growing in was the main inspiration for the composition. Below is another in what became a series of ten paintings in gouache, all about 50cm along their longest side.





This painting, also completed in the winter of 2005 to 2006, was inspired by a photo that I took from the side of St Stefano's Cathedral in Capri. I've called it variously "Baroque v Classical" and "S. Stefano and the Bank of Italy". I love the baroque facades of Italian churches and here the religious building and the secular one balance each other. I've avoided including people in these paintings: on Capri there were too many people and I preferred to point my gaze upwards at nature and the architecture.


That long visit in August 2005 taught me that Sorrento on one's own is best taken in short doses. I became just a little sorry for myself as each evening I made my solitary way back to my apartment. It was a huge flat for four, into which Sorrento Holidays had transferred my booking with no prior warning, instead of the little one-room place off the Piazza Tasso which I had booked from England. It became my temporary studio and had lots of space for me to spread my growing array of sketches out to view my progress, but it wasn't very cosy.


As I walked back along the dark section of the Corsa Italia late one evening I was accosted by a young man who asked me plaintively to come home with him. He was downcast but not surprised when I said "No" and hurried on. The incident made me realise how out of place I must seem in this town full of couples and families, however much at home I felt myself.



To see more of my paintings, visit http://www.janwindle.com










Sunday, January 21, 2007

Drawing Sorrento: the honeymoon period

I had spent the winter of 2004-5 longing to go to Italy but for one reason and another was unable to leave England. My decisions about changing my life had awakened in me a kind of manic behaviour that led me to forget to eat between meals, to eat half of my normal diet in fact, and to exercise regularly, a kind of limbering up for what I wanted to do. I had feelings that took me back to being a teenager – a rebellious one – and I was determined to go back to Sorrento – just like the song – but by myself.

I hadn’t flown on my own for many years. It was a revelation to me of how sad and impotent I was in danger of becoming when I found it quite a struggle to remember how to check in at Gatwick. But once I arrived in Naples and at one o’clock in the afternoon took the bus again to the centre of Sorrento, my confidence came flooding back, despite my having been travelling since half past three in the morning.

It was early April, the Easter holidays. The weather was bright and cool and windy as I got off the bus in the Piazza Tasso. I was greeted immediately by a smiling young Italian. He led me round the corner of the Piazza into the Via San Francesco, where I had booked an apartment. The apartment faced on to the little street where a constant procession of scooters, cars, vans and tourists passed within a few inches of the building. Alessandro showed me the apartment, right on the street side with a tiny balcony overlooking the bustle below. I would enjoy the view, said Alessandro.

Even Alessandro – a very charming and persuasive man – could not convince me that I would get a wink of sleep in this room, and so he showed me, hesitantly, the alternative, facing a silent building site. A building site? I questioned. Oh no, he said, there won’t be any noise – they’ve run out of money to go on with the work. And I believed him and settled into this Spartan – but very clean and – yes – he was right – absolutely peaceful apartment, for the next week.

I had come to draw Sorrento and I set up a working routine straight away. In the mornings, I would go out and get bread, fruit and croissants and have a walk round the centre of the town, getting my bearings and deciding where I would perch myself to draw for that day. In the afternoon I would have a rest in my quiet apartment and continue the morning’s drawing from memory. And in the evenings I went out to explore the restaurants and piazzas that were buzzing with life till midnight. Sorrento is a very safe town. I never felt ill at ease on my own there – though I was an object of pity for the gregarious Italians, I knew.

In my morning forays out I chose my subjects on visual, compositional grounds, rather than looking for the most popular tourist sights. I didn’t have any clear plans as to what I would do with my pictures at this time.

Drawing has always been something I just do, particularly when I’m in a new place. It’s to do with a feeling of wanting to own what I see. Picasso (with whom I would not have the nerve to compare myself in any other way) seems to have had a similar feeling about the power of the artist’s gaze. I have been rereading parts of John Richardson’s vast biography of him and find this: discussing two watercolours of Picasso’s intended lover Fernande asleep, showing her watched by two different men. Richardson writes that he believes that Picasso painted these in an attempt to persuade Fernande to become his lover rather than stay with the sculptor Debienne:

Picasso’s eyes seem to exert a strange power: the mirada fuerte power to conjure Fernande from the bed of the weak watcher into the arms of the strong watcher.
(“A Life of Picasso Volume 1 1886-1906” published by Jonathan Cape (1991) - page 317)

I had no such erotic motivation but I wanted to express my delight in being there in that week, in that cool bright windy Mediterranean town, by capturing the sights in front of me.

So having decided on my location for the day’s work, I would settle down on my folding stool and begin.

First a detailed pencil drawing using only line – I was working on a pad of watercolour paper just a little bigger than A4. This would take anything up to an hour and a half.

Next, I took waterproof ink and a mapping pen with a flexible nib and drew over the pencil, changing it, emphasising the important details and structures and suppressing the superfluous details. I added people who passed by, if they caught my eye and imagination. I built the picture gradually. Then I erased the pencil marks.

Now I could go into colour. With watercolour I touched in washes of yellows greys, ochres, gingery reds, blue and mauve reflecting from the sky into the shadows – for almost the first time I appreciated why that creamy yellow is called Naples yellow, and the difference between that and the harsher earthy colour of yellow ochre. Venetian red and umber – all those so-Italian names, in thin washes. The white paper ricochets the light back through the layers and the colour glows luminously.
Final touches were made with the pen and a very small brush – size 00




This was the first outdoor painting that I made, that cool April week. I was sitting outside the Bar Fauno, the big café-restaurant that dominates the Piazza Tasso. The 17th Century Chiesa delle Carmine, the baroque church on the corner, caught my eye with its flamboyant decorations and peeling Naples yellow stucco. Inside, it is used as an art gallery.

There is a constant flow across the wide piazza, of people of all ages and many nationalities (in August many of them British, at Easter and in October many Americans, as well as Germans, Dutch, Australian, French, Scandinavian, East European and of course Italian tourists.) It’s a popular place in the evenings and the Chiesa delle Carmine looks splendid in its floodlighting.

That first morning in Sorrento solo, my pen traced the arabesques of the carvings and the mobile, voluble figures of the Italians and tourists meeting and chatting in the piazza, and I was absolutely happy.

In the centre of the swirling traffic is a statue of a pope or saint whose name I forget. I think it is Saint Anthony – he has the crook and mitre that show he is a figure of high standing in the church. The square is named after Torquato Tasso (1544-595), the famous poet who was born and lived in Sorrento and whose house you can find in one of the quiet back streets leading down to the Marina Grande.


I found it very difficult to photograph the statue in the centre of the Piazza Tasso because you risked life and limb to cross the road nearby, let alone stopping to take a photo……









I am always struck by the lovely lines of the wrought iron street lamps in Italy. I do attract some funny looks from Italians particularly when I go round the streets with my neck craning upwards at the lamps and the carving, too, over doorways and windows and on balconies.









I found my next subject by walking along the Via degli Aranci and through the ruined Roman city gate arch that leads back to the Corsa Italia which is the main shopping street in Sorrento.


On the pavement outside the Duomo, I found a water-fountain made of bronze, still used by passers-by and by the occasional dog who licked up the drips from the stone work around it. I am told that this fountain may not be very ancient (perhaps only 200 years old) but it had a character that made me stop and look, set up my stool and draw it.



This was later expanded into a large gouache painting that I am still working on – the figures in that rather dreamlike picture have gone through various transformations over the months.




“Drinking Fountain, Corsa Italia”
This version has no figures. I have also varied the colour of the building behind the fountain recently and put in a figure, which will have to be removed, I fear. Begun in January 2006, it is still a work in progress in January 07.

It was a bright fresh April day in Sorrento when I painted the little watercolour sketch of the drinking fountain. It was cool but I was wearing sunglasses when I began the drawing. As always when drawing outside I found myself periodically surrounded by admiring children.

Italian children are among the most polite and charming in the world, I have found. With my smattering of Italian I was engaged in conversation by a group whose comments to each other and me of “Bello! Bellissimo!” were apparently heartfelt. They tried to ask me questions but gave up, all except for one little boy of about 8, who not only managed to make me understand that he wanted to know what I intended to do with my picture when it was finished, but went off and got his father to look at it.

Tactfully, his father assured his son that I would have no intention of selling the work. It was only later that I realised that he was protecting me from making statements that might get me into trouble with the police. Art sales in Italy are heavily taxed and you are not allowed to sell in the street. But, as another artist, in Positano, assured me later, no–one can stop you painting in the street.

It was while I was painting there outside the Duomo that I had my first and so far only experience of bad behaviour in Sorrento. Having put my sunglasses down next to me when I began applying colour to the picture, I was suddenly surrounded by teenagers – apparently interested in my picture – but when they had gone my sunglasses went with them! That was a lesson I needed to learn.

My next stake-out was at the Mona Lisa restaurant in the old part of Sorrento. This café is right opposite the Sedile Dominova, a Roman building that is still a meeting place for Sorrentinos to read their newspapers and chat. A friend who was born and brought up in Sorrento told me that it was originally a meeting place for Roman women to meet, and the name refers to that, in Latin – the ladies’ sitting place.

On this first occasion I was not looking at Sedile Dominova, but at the campanile of the Duomo, up the street next to it. This year the tower has been undergoing repairs but when I painted the picture below it was a lovely sight. Classically proportioned tiers of brick, rusticated stone, marble and plaster arches frame a graceful Madonna, the bells and at the very top a beautiful blue and gold faced clock.


Too late, I realised that I could not include the clock – I had become too interested in the shoe shop and the scooter in the foreground and had no room! I decided to make another drawing to include the top of the Duomo, later on.

The waitresses at the Mona Lisa were very surprised by my activities with pen and watercolour but very patient and flatteringly interested in my drawing. The little paintings took me two mornings to complete, so I drank rather a lot of coffee and ate lots of the delicious petits fours that they served with it – not cheap mornings but very pleasant. When I went back, in the summer, the same waiters were there and I was able to continue exploring in watercolour and ink this extremely old (though now very commercialised) cross roads in the “Historic Centre” part of Sorrento.



Here is my watercolour of the Sedile Dominova, looking directly in at the trompe l’oeuil paintings inside the apse-shaped hall. This one took me many hours of patient drawing before I began building up the layers of colour to show that patina that covered the aged stone pillars. Painting a painting is never easy either – some of the mouldings inside are solid and others are painted illusions by 17th century artists.

This painting was used by Givanni Petagna in his book about historic Sorrento, “Sorrento: Il Conservatorio di Santa Maria delle Grazie” which was published in 2006. This is an erudite history (in Italian) of the Conservatorio, in the Piazza S Francesco, a few yards from where I stayed on that first solo visit to Sorrento.

I visited Pompeii during that first week, too. My tonal drawing of one of the tall arches at the end of the Forum took me all day. It was a little laboured and reminds me of those 19th century illustrations to travel books. Apart from a surreal conversation with a large American surrounded by nervous Italian bodyguards who told me that I ought to recognise him – he was a world famous wrestler and he certainly looked it (his hair was dyed gold and he was dressed mainly in gold lame) this was not a memorable visit to what is a truly fascinating place. I have promised myself that I shall do Pompeii justice one day, but Sorrento had my heart that week in April 2005.
















































About Me

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Like a butterfly emerging painfully in several stages I've morphed a few times in my life, from art student to teacher, from rebellious confused twenty-something to faithful wife and well-meaning mother, from bored middle-aged art teacher to egocentric freethinking Italophile and painter. For the last few years I've been writing poetry and painting, drawing illustrations for my own work and other peoples's, and sharing as much of my time as possible with Donall Dempsey, the Irish poet who has owned my heart since I met him in 2008. We've spent working holidays together since then, writing, painting and enjoying ourselves and each other's company in a variety of places from New York to Bulgaria. We visit the Amalfi Coast in Italy every year, on a pilgrimage to the country that that I believe saved my life from sterility and pointlessness back in 2004. I'm looking forward to a happy and creative last third of life - at last I believe I've found the way to achieve that. I have paintings to sell on my website, www.janwindle.com, and books and prints at www.dempseyandwindle.co.uk. But I'll keep on writing and painting whether or not they find a market!