RMW Ramblings

  Campaniles A campanile is a free-standing bell tower.  The most famous is St Mark's Campanile in Venice, towering over the square at 325 feet.  The centerpiece of the campus of my graduate school, University of California at Berkeley is Sather Tower, usually called simply the Campanile, stands at 307 feet. But we have a campanile of our own here by Wilmington, the DuPont Carillon at Nemours, at 210 feet. Here's a sketch comparing all three...     Construction of St Mark's Campanile was begun in about 940, but continued slowly over a long period.  It was extended, modified, and repaired several ties over the centuries.  It finally succumbed to gravity and collapsed in 1902.  It was rebuilt, completed in 1912. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark%27s_Campanile] St Mark's Campanile appears as a small detail in a panoramic painting I did of the Venice Canale Grande that serves as a crest over a doorway at our cottage.       ...

  Carnevale di Venezia Carnevale di Venezia , acrylic on 10 x 8 canvasboard, with heavy use of metallic paints.

  Arrival of the Guests A Venetian Painting The guests have arrived by motor launch at a Venetian palazzo, welcomed by a group of women.  The setting seems to be the 1950s.  Acrylic on gallery wrap canvas.  Here it's hanging over our dining room buffet, soon to be replaced by something more seasonal.

  Grand Canale A Ve netian Panorama Venezia - Canale Grande is an acrylic painting on hardboard that serves as a decorative piece over a doorway at our cottage.  I have painted several panoramic pieces that are over doorways or panels on bookshelves. Canale is suggestively painted, without detail, but the building silhouettes follow the actual pattern seen along the Grand Canal. Here's a detail of the Piazza San Marco end of the panel.

  Wood Panel Painting Fortuna   Found frames often need custom size panels for painting if the frame is not a common size.  For this found frame painting I cut a birch plywood panel and used the wood grain as an element of the painting.   "Fortuna" is a sculpture in Venice by Bernardo Falconi that's atop the Dogana da Mar, the once customs house, now art museum, on a point directly across the entrance to the Grand Canal from the Piazza San Marco. This gull's eye view faces, not San Marco, but the San Giorgio Monastery.    I thinned the acrylic paint on the sky and water to stain, rather than cover, the wood grain.  This left the grain to suggest the cloud and water surface structure.