Paintings

Two years ago I decided to paint the places I visited while on my holidays. I am currently aiming at 2, max 3 paintings for each destination, so 2/3 paintings per year. Consequently, I am not expecting this section to grow too much!

For each painting, I do 2/3 hours sessions each time and, at the end of each session, I take a picture: so I can see how the painting progressed. I don't feel like I am a great artist and I need to focus a lot when I paint, but I do enjoy doing them and remembering the places I have been to, and how I felt when I was there.

UZBEKISTAN 2025

Seeing Samarkand was an old dream and I was so excited to finally see the cities of the Silk Road! We went to Uzbekistan and we visited the capital, Tashkent, and the three cities of Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand. They were all wonderful and quite different from each other.

Khiva in particular was a wonderful surprise, while Samarkand was as beautiful as I expected. My first painting from Uzbekistan is indeed the main plaza of Samarkand, Registan Square. This painting was really difficult and I am proud that I managed to finish it: for months I kept saying " I think I will need more or less 8 hours more... "

In Uzbekistan, we saw ( and we rode) the Bactrian Camels, the ones with two humps. They look quite different from Dromedary Camels, but I cannot choose which one I prefer...

The trip to Japan was a special request from my husband, and I was not expecting much - even if I ended up liking it a lot. I have already been to Japan before, and I didn't like the main cities so much. It indeed helped that this time we went to less touristic and less chaotic locations. However, thanks to this trip I finally started learning about Sashiko, so I really cannot complain.

The first painting I did was the onsen, a natural hot spring. We went to the city of Beppu which is very famous for its thermal water, and we visited a few hot springs there. I loved the atmosphere and how relaxing it was. The onsen painting is not perfect, but it reminds me of Beppu so I still like it.

The second painting is Himeji Castle, which is in a town between Hiroshima and Osaka. The castle is impressive and you can see it from everywhere, and moreover, it is fully illuminated at night. The place was not so crowded and we felt like we had the whole castle for ourselves, we have really magic memories of Himeji.

The last painting is Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine in Kyoto: it's actually way smaller than the other two. I don't like Kyoto but I thought it was necessary to drop by for a couple of days and see the most famous temples, and so we did. Inari Taisha shrine is always nice, even if this time it was so much more crowded than before.

JORDAN 2023

Jordan was a fantastic trip and since then, I love camels. Because of this, it definitely deserves to be mentioned here. Getting close to camels, learning about them and even riding them for a couple of hours was an exceptional discovery and I became really passionate about camels - and every destination where camel riding is possible jumped very high in my bucket list.

I made only two paintings of Jordan, one about the desert and one about Petra. Wadi Rum desert was a great discovery and my favourite part of the trip. The people were lovely and sleeping in the desert felt so different and relaxing. We spent two days travelling around with our bedouin guide and we were amazed by the scenery - I had no doubt the desert had to be a painting.

The second painting I made was about Petra. Without a doubt the most famous location in Jordan, it's definitely worth it. I decided to paint the most famous monument, the treasury at the entrance, even if it was not my favourite part. There are a lot of hiking paths with beautiful views, but in this case I wanted to paint the two camels. They required a lot of effort and I am not completely happy with the results, maybe one day I will practise more and improve my camel painting skills!

Merry without Mary

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