I have been out of digital reach while staying with my friends Tim and Deborah at their charming farmhouse in the emerald hills above Poppi in Casantino, Italy.
Under normal circumstances I would be very active – zipping about in the car,
helping with chores and cooking etc as well as writing, taking photographs,
drawing, thinking about projects or just letting my mind go wild. But no not on
this occasion.
On leaving Pisa airport in my rented car I started to feel queazy and light
headed. During the three-hour drive to Poppi things became increasingly
difficult. I was travelling with my youngest daughter who, being used to my
appalling sense of direction, predicted that I would get lost. Of course I did
by inadvertently taking a wrong fork off the motorway, which added an hour to
our journey.
When we eventually arrived I was feeling so ill I had to say my hellos and
retire to bed, where I scrunched myself into a foetal position in and attempt
to alleviate the most horrid stomach cramps.
Just three weeks before the same thing had happened and I was diagnosed with a
nasty strain of e-coli – apparently we all have the good strain. After a course
of antibiotics it seemed to have disappeared. Or so I thought.
So here I was among these beautiful hills just wanting to be in bed. The next
day I went to see an Italian doctor who prescribed yet more antibiotics.
As I drove back up the hill ominous black clouds were gathering over the
mountains and the distant booms where already betraying the coming of an electric
storm. I made it back to bed before the first lighting struck.
There followed a storm worthy of the Second World War. Back in bed I lay in a
semi delirious state enfolded within a large duvet while listening to the first
hesitant pitter patter of the rain as it hit the terracotta tiles above my
head. It increased in intensity and volume settling into comforting white noise
layered with thunderclaps and shafts of brilliant lightning.
It was so beautiful that it was almost worth being ill. As the thunder ebbed
away I slipped into a soporific sleep. My point of telling you this is that you
can always find something positive in adversity...
And an extra joy provided by the heavens free of charge...
The following days were spent sitting on the vine-shaded patio looking across
the valley to Poppi Castle…
This sedentary predicament gave me the pleasure of watching my friend Tim
painting. It set me on this train of thought…
The act of seeing.
I was struck by the intensity and rapidity with which Tim was observing the
landscape he was painting. Being a classically trained artist he paints what he
sees before him.
Unlike a camera, which captures a frozen moment in time,
painting captures many moments and each incrementally changing. Assessing those
changes was what was going on inside Tim’s brain as he looked at the landscape
then at the canvas. All the decision-making information was being fed to his
hand and eye. Questions of colour, texture, composition, depth, light were
being considered in spilt seconds.
It made a connection with Stanislavskian trained actors (something have written
about in an earlier post). Stanislavski wanted acting- less acting. Through many
months of rehearsal and character assessment the final performance becomes real
and believable, very much happening in that moment for the first time with no
two performances ever being the same. The ability to act like this is built on
layers of understanding of how the human psyche works. All of this information
can be minded at any given moment to contribute to the believability of the
performance.
Tim too is ‘living in the moment’ when he paints. With every stroke of his brush, over the minutes, hours, days, and weeks he makes a piece of layered history of that landscape he has captured on the canvas giving it a life and depth that you can experience every time you look at the finished painting.
Here is little photo essay when I finally surfaced from my bed...