A Weekend of Conversations with Artists
Talking with fellow second year Florence Academy of Art painting student Livvy Wells during a morning coffee break
“For as the wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self.”
This Sunday night, my head is spinning from all the richness and depth of conversations I have had over the last 48 hours. From Friday evening to tonight, topics have ranged from consciousness, the role of artists in society, personality traits, artificial intelligence, connection and community, how to design the perfect still life all the way permacultures in Canada….
Friday night began with dinner at Tina and Marc Dalessio’s villa in the hills outside of Florence. Marc is a highly successful predominantly landscape artist, and Tina has recently graduated from the Florence Academy of Art, leaving her career as a published PhD Human Rights Lawyer and academic to become a professional artist. Their home is in a palazzo from the 1600s, with a view over the Arno river and the Duomo, with frescoes adorning their walls. Their apartment is in the previous ballroom of the palace, and the frescoes depict majestic trees, rolling hills, and a replica of the palazzo itself.
There were 4 of us for joining for dinner - Alice, Sparsh and myself, all at FAA currently, and Julz, Alice’s fiancé visiting from London.
We talked about consciousness, connecting to portals in other universes, quantum physics being the magic of science, post-modernism, modernism, and the rebirth of realistic art. So often the conversation turns to the value of realistic art vs. the more abstract, conceptual. I observed that ALL art is perception. And Marc said, “So much of art is perception. I mean, it’s just oil and mud, at the end of the day….” The importance of tuning into subtlety, intuition, emotion. We talked about the role of an artist and the special duty that we have as artists – we are creating images. This is acting as an influencer.
We talked about Tesla, and how he believed he wasn’t a “brilliant man” nor the most brilliant man alive. He was a vehicle. A conduit. For the spirits. For ideas that were greater than he was. We shared book recommendations – Frances Yates’ book “Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition”. A book that explains how ancient traditions were not at odds with the Church of the renaissance time, and artists painting in that time were not representing god and Jesus in the same way we think now – the principles were broader, more humanist.
Saturday night was Daniel Graves’ first ever exhibition of his classical realist artwork in Florence after creating art here for 40 years. His school (and my school!) The Florence Academy of Art, has been functioning in Florence since 1996 – 27 years.
After the opening, a group of us found aperitivo at Soul Kitchen (good, healthy, more of a buffet than a few peanuts and chips) and then helped warm Hannah’s new studio apartment in a back alley in Santa Croce. We had a new friend join the group – James, who is studying drawing for 6 months at the Russian Academy. James shared the concept of “the Big Five Personality Traits” when discussing what we artists are like. James said many artists are high on the “sensitive/nervous” spectrum of “neuroticism” (vs. secure/confident). A theme from this week has certainly been how many introverts we have at school and in the artistic community, vs. extroverts.
Sunday afternoon I posed for my friend Jess to paint my portrait. Jess has set up a weekly Sunday session of P’s… Portraits, Prosecco, Painting, and I think there was a 4th P… This Sunday it was only me. And I am grateful for the depth of conversation this allowed us. I was writing notes furiously!
We talked about connecting to our ancestors (I had a brainwave idea for my first still life – I have been quietly stressing about what I will assemble for my still life, and last night a comment from Duhita helped me start to think about one particular object that I feel a strong connection to, and to build the rest of the still life around that; my brainwave was to paint my great grandfather’s wooden art case). What does it mean to be connected to our ancestors? Am I connected to mine? Family constellations and being connected by strings…
We talked about ways to live an artistic life – the idea of a digital nomad, new to me, in an artistic sense. Yes, traveling and blogging, but painting in various locations around the world, and then selling those works from that particular place. But then expanding on that, I thought about finding local artists, and showcasing their works, their stories, on a blog or podcast. And then beyond that, finding FAA alumni and following their work, progress, careers, and visiting them and collaborating with them. And then the idea of organising month long on-location painting residencies with other painters from the school, possibly in the home towns of the alumni (hello south India!).
We talked about the concept of re-defining the values in society, vs. re-distributing the wealth. If society valued what artists do more, the money would therefore flow to them, and there would be no need for actual shifting of money.
Jess asked whether I saw myself painting en plain air. I said, 200% yes! I love being outside. In nature. I spoke about my summer traveling in Italy last year, painting everywhere I traveled, and how powerful, nourishing, grounding, enjoyable, and spiritual that was for me. Our conversation also made me ask myself what stories do I want to tell when I’m creating my art? Does one need a literal story or specific message, or can it be about capturing the essence of a person, a place? Capturing the spirit of the outdoors?
This then brought us to the role of the spirit in our existence and our chakras. We talked about the book “Eastern Mind, Western Body” by Anodea Judith, that shows how the chakras system of the “East” are relevant to Western society today, through links to psychology and, science and spirituality.
Sunday evening the conversation flowed over dinner at Lonnie and Stefan’s. The group tonight included Per again, and also Hannah and Kaelin. We talked about consciousness. Tom Campbell. I’d write more, but I don’t fully understand it! I’ll have to ask Maudie for more information. Same goes for Artificial intelligence. Can machines overtake man’s intelligence? The concept of Singularity (not to be confused with synchronicity!). Apparently, five years ago, TIME magazine predicted the increase in machine intelligence as curving sharply up, and that at a certain point – apparently right now, five years hence – man will have to make a decision; will we allow machines to increase their intelligence further, and thus they will become self-perpetuating, self-ruling, with no need for man any more.? We spoke about man’s nature – the book “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari came up many times (mostly brought up by me) as well as “Homo Deus,” his second book (again, mostly brought up by me – but there were so many connections to what everyone was saying!). Were the American Indians (pre or post Horse??) peaceful before the White Man, or were they also cruel and violent? Apparently the latter.
Perhaps, as Kaelin said (which I found highly profound), man does not need to be against the flow of nature, but part of nature. Man is not separate, but man is “nature,” just like every other thing we consider “nature” – every animal, plant, blade of grass. We spoke about cycles. It is normal for a system to entropy. To grow, to shrink. To thrive and to die. Hannah attended a lecture in Melbourne where the scientific experts said that in 300 years, man will have destroyed the earth to a point where we will die off and mother nature will reclaim her earth and begin again.
As we talked about nature and the cycles of life, I discovered Kaelin’s father is a physicist who has spent the last decade building up a permaculture on his farm in Canada. He has become a world expert on developing ways to farm by recreating the conditions that exist in natural forests and on natural farmlands. This includes having the right flowers, bees and chickens, to fertilise and till the soil.
But I must temper all this intellectual talk with the last conversation on Saturday night at 2am at a Mexican underground bar near the Bargello in the centre of Florence. I was with a group of friends from school, and in the dim light with margaritas all around, we started talking about poop. How to poo effectively (#SquattyPotty – This Unicorn Changed the Way I Poop), what good poos look like, tracking them, and then we proceeded to find numerous poo tracking apps on the App Store… so it’s definitely not all highfalutin intellectual conversations. There is room for everything…