Origins

Christmas togetherness and my painting of Casa Germano in Italy

Before I began painting Spirit Boats, I used to love to paint Italian villages and street scenes. In the six times I have traveled in Italy, five of those have been with Leo and we have been able to establish good relationships with his cousins in Liguria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liguria
The uniting factor is the place that you see in this painting- the original house where  Leo's father was born and where he and his 9 siblings were raised. It is named Biardo and this ultra rustic house that is off the beaten path,  is no longer inhabited but kept in the family as a nice place to have food or gather for fun.  It sits a above Savona nestled in the ridge of mountains that hug the Rivera.
I did a lot of drawings of this house, with its thick crooked walls and shuttered windows but when I got to the painting, I populated it with some cousins who were enjoying a pizza al fresco in 1991. On this day, after the sun had gone down and we made our way down the forested hill to the newer houses where the tribe lives today, we were guided by hundreds of fire flies that lived in the dark green horse chestnut trees. There were soft insect generated lights sprinkled all through the trees along the path. It is one of the best memories I have of a special magical time in Italy with Leo and his extended family.