TORRE PENDENTE

This is my absolute first oil painting. It was conceived and executed some three years ago. The oil is a rendering of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and I used a bewitching, embellished (touched up) postcard as its model. I traveled to Pisa in October of 2000, and in many ways it was perfectly preserved and in tune to the late medieval city-state of the distant 14th century. All around the Campo dei Mirocoli, the grounds for all three buildings, were many souvenir peddlars selling curiosities, prodigious wares in the way of tower trinkets (you know the drill-tee-shirts, mugs, postcards, ball caps, larger prints, sculpture, pendants etc....) This was a mind blowing experience for me as I had dreamed capriciously of witnessing this phenomenon, this architectural quirk (or better oddity), all of my mortal days! I believe my painting came out right handsomely as a result of my strong devotion for the edifice. Please read up on its history because it is of a consummate fascination; a labyrinth of unusual events are baked into the cake of the Torre Pendente. The most noteworthy is that Galileo may have dropped cannon balls off of it to prove that mass and gravity are two unique wonders of physics, indeed a rare marvel! I had first learned of this on Fractured Fairy Tales, a cartoon written by Jay Ward. The Torre Pendente was begun in 1173 and commenced to lean almost immediately, so it amazing that it is still standing.

My work was painted on a piece of maple wood and is 11.25 inches square. I used Winsor & Newton oil paints for it. There is a strong use of impasto, or the thick application of paint to give it a pronounced, three-dimensional surface. I do not believe that you can quite detect that characteristic in the photograph for this blog posting. There is the use of foreshortening and a teeny bit of the application of chirascuro. I`m proud of that because those are lessons that I learned in art history class; those techniques were conceived by the Italian Renaissance artists. The tower itself is teeming with detail and quite a bit of toil is etched into the surface of the maple. The sky is a deep azure blue (and gave me a bit of trouble) just as it was on that crisp October morn in Italy some seven years prior! The lawns and cypress trees are rendered with accuracy and some TLC. That day in Pisa was one of the best days in my entire life, so I hope that my painting too reflects that rare mirth, that visits us so infrequently!