Vicoli and SMT Store Revamp
Although I started in photography early on in life, I felt it more a record of events than art in and of itself. That changed in 2011 with a trip to Italy and in the years since, I take it more and more seriously. A trip back to Florence in 2016 put photography as a priority as I ventured out daily to capture both artistic shots and references for paintings.
In 2024, I took the same approach in a trip that included Rome, Orte, and Florence. While I have been to Florence five times now, I still am able to discover something I've never seen before just by wandering.
I wandered into Piazza della Signoria for the umpteenth time, admiring the statues in Loggia dei Lanzi and for the first time, noticed an alley (vicolo) alongside it running towards the Arno. How had I never seen this before? I started walking down the narrow alley as it wound its way between ancient buildings.
I dig this stuff. The combination of narrow streets and high, ancient walls, hits me at my very core. As I'm slowly walking down the alley, I'm taking picture after picture. I get to a little bend in the street and look to my right and I see this.
The play of light and shadow. Iconic Italian streetlamps and a sliver of daylight partially illuminate the alley. I took a couple pictures, not even thinking that it might be a good painting. A few months later, I recognized it was stunning on its own, but it might make a great painting as well.
Some paintings take months to finish and others a few days. This was the latter. I started off with blacks and left most of the scene in shadow adding in only a few select details from the reference photo.
In my last position, I was a programmer and the department head knew that I painted and although she would ask in passing what I was working on, I don't know that she had seen much of my work. As I had resigned so that I could devote my time to creative endeavors, she was a little bit more interested. I showed her Vicoli #1 and she audibly gasped before saying, "I had no idea!"
While this isn't my latest painting, it has been on my mind more often as I've been going through the process of revamping the SMT Store. I've decided to use my store as the primary sales platform for my originals so that I have control of price and marketing of the brand. This in turn has gotten me thinking about my painting style and the genre I tend to gravitate towards. While I frequently experiment within different disciplines, the frequent trips to Italy and the thousands of reference images make for a rich resource to draw from for future work. It wouldn't be much of stretch to say that Italian inspired art really is my passion. In fact, I'm currently working on a Duomo painting...
View the Original Painting Vicoli #1
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