Gondola I, watercolor on Italian paper

GONDOLA I, 4x6 in. (10x15 cm.) watercolor on Italian paper, painted on location in Venice a couple of years ago. I love to paint small watercolors wherever I am, wherever I go. It is fun and challenging. Try it! Go out there and do it!

Like Elizabeth Gilbert says in EAT, PRAY, LOVE: "You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be!"

GONDOLA III, watercolor

Gondola III, watercolor, 9x6 in

Always clever, the American painter and sculptor Alexander Calder, better known for his "mobiles" (1898-1976), answered in a dry and serious tone to a rich art collector who requested a "mobile" made in gold:
"Yes, I will do it in gold if you want,  but I will paint it in black!"

GONDOLA I, VENICE, ITALY, watercolor

Gondola I, Venice, Italy,  6x9 in. watercolor, available

It was fun to sketch in Venice. It is such a challenge to control your colors, though. Color jumps at you from every corner. Continuing with my reporting La Biennale di Venezia: another artist's work I liked: Geta Brātescu, from Romania. She's 87 years old now. She's one of the most important figures in the Romanian avant-garde of the 60s and 70s, she was trained in art and literature. In the 1980s she created a series of quilted machine-embroidered textile collages in which she shifted from the deeply personal work she was doing in her studio, to address broader questions of female identity. At the Biennale she presented: "Medeic Calistenic Moves", sewing machine drawings on textile.