Many years ago I had the great good fortune, probably not sufficiently appreciated at the time, certainly not taken adequate advantage of, to live in Florence for nearly a year. The trouble with living in a fabulous city rich in stories and visually moving in the deepest parts of one's soul is that one may still fall into bad habits brought from home, and I did.
Being a naive 20 year old coming out of a horrendous relationship terminating in a welfare sponsored abortion in a town where I was completely alone and in the hands of some pretty brutal doctors and nurses I got to see how the other side lived.
I say the other side, because though my childhood was one of relative economic privilege, the memories are such that I am constantly flipping over debris to find good memories to cultivate, to uncover the reasons behind the others and to approach forgiveness.
In sunny California, I saw that there are many people who have lousy memories without food or social opportunity, some who rise out and lots who never do. I was living at the time surrounded by people in despair and torment, and had made the childish error of falling in love with one of them. It might not have been the best time for my parents to send me to Europe alone with little money, no connections and no plan, but that was their way of handling things, and if I had been less homesick and broken hearted I might have been able to make more of it.
So, I learned to speak Italian, to cook food from markets instead of from cans, to appreciate the beauty of a gone world lovingly preserved and to take long walks and bike rides in search of the perfect pastry or gelato emporium. I must get over my sadness that at the time, I never drank coffee. I didn't believe I had the right to try to draw or paint, so I didn't, I looked at other people's paintings and read other people's books, played other people's music and thought other people's thoughts. The loneliness of my time there forced me to begin to grow a person. It has taken a long time, but I credit Italy with the fertilizer, the right soil and the warm sun.
My first experience of a new concept in how to see was explained to me with the euphonious word 'chiaroscuro'. There is a reason we use other languages to refer to ideas the English vocabulary doesn't encompass.
"The use of light and dark pigment to create the illusion of solid forms" applies as much to how we manage memory to create stories as to visual art. The benefit of applying the idea to a memory palette is that not only images are created and strung together, but also deep emotion, motivation, identity. The fluidity of paint is a satisfying medium, if I don't like the work I've done, I can scrape it off and paint another one. This brings me to another visual concept: Pentimento.
Being a naive 20 year old coming out of a horrendous relationship terminating in a welfare sponsored abortion in a town where I was completely alone and in the hands of some pretty brutal doctors and nurses I got to see how the other side lived.
I say the other side, because though my childhood was one of relative economic privilege, the memories are such that I am constantly flipping over debris to find good memories to cultivate, to uncover the reasons behind the others and to approach forgiveness.
In sunny California, I saw that there are many people who have lousy memories without food or social opportunity, some who rise out and lots who never do. I was living at the time surrounded by people in despair and torment, and had made the childish error of falling in love with one of them. It might not have been the best time for my parents to send me to Europe alone with little money, no connections and no plan, but that was their way of handling things, and if I had been less homesick and broken hearted I might have been able to make more of it.
So, I learned to speak Italian, to cook food from markets instead of from cans, to appreciate the beauty of a gone world lovingly preserved and to take long walks and bike rides in search of the perfect pastry or gelato emporium. I must get over my sadness that at the time, I never drank coffee. I didn't believe I had the right to try to draw or paint, so I didn't, I looked at other people's paintings and read other people's books, played other people's music and thought other people's thoughts. The loneliness of my time there forced me to begin to grow a person. It has taken a long time, but I credit Italy with the fertilizer, the right soil and the warm sun.
My first experience of a new concept in how to see was explained to me with the euphonious word 'chiaroscuro'. There is a reason we use other languages to refer to ideas the English vocabulary doesn't encompass.
"The use of light and dark pigment to create the illusion of solid forms" applies as much to how we manage memory to create stories as to visual art. The benefit of applying the idea to a memory palette is that not only images are created and strung together, but also deep emotion, motivation, identity. The fluidity of paint is a satisfying medium, if I don't like the work I've done, I can scrape it off and paint another one. This brings me to another visual concept: Pentimento.
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