Where you in Florence in 1991?

 

a watercolor from twenty-three years ago!

painted on site at Boboli gardens on cold pressed Arches paper.

Saturday I received an email:

Dear Ms. Brooksby;

Just curious, but were you in Florence Italy in June of 91 and were you painting watercolors next to the Uffezi Gallery? Not sure, but I believe I may have purchased a painting from you. I was there during the International AIDS Conference with Jim (Lastname), who, if I have the right Brooksby, is your cousin. The watercolor below is the painting in question, but the signature doesn't match anything I've seen in your more recent work. If I'm all wet about this, I apologize for inconveniencing you.

Sincerely,

Owen Weislow

Damn right that's mine!   Here is my respone:

Hi Owen,

Yes that is my watercolour, quite a collectors item.  That one I am 100% positive I painted on site from the Boboli garden.  Cool, thanks for emailing.  Can I put your message on my blog?  I'll remove all names.

Thank you Owen Weislow for sending this to me, and thank you for allowing me to post this on my blog.  But Jim Lastname is not my cousin, a great friend.

 I've often changed my signature.  Many of the early watercolors I painted in Florence are signed "Beliza" B for my last initial and Eliza for part of my middle name.  This one is one of the very first when I'd began painting and rode my Vespa into the Florentine hills with my easel strapped behind. 

I've always advocated artists using archival material.  Definitely worth if hearing from a happy client  a quarter of a century later. 

 

Florence sweet Florence.

We're running around Florence, 

shoe shopping, 

eating icecream 

and visiting family and friends.  

Eat your heart out!  

See you in a few days.

I sold my car for 400 bucks and bought a one way ticket to Florence

Today I logged on to Chuck Wendig's blog and learned that he is to become a father.  I wish him all the best.  I like Chuck Wendig's blog because he spills his guts, sometimes too much for my taste and seems to get diarrhea of the key board but it is Chuck that inspired me to come out of the closet.
Thanks again Chuck!

In 1988 I sold my honda civic for 400 bucks and bought a one way ticket to Florence Italy.  It was hard to sell the clunker that had a collection of big round metallic pins stuck to the roof on the inside. It was gold colored and strangely enough, the owner of the house I lived at had the exact same car, same color, same year.  That was when I had a P.O. box in a town called Detour, Maryland.  For real! Don't laugh.

The summer in Detour, I sent a a post card to a guy in Baltimore that I had a crush on, these were the days when mobile phones and internet were sci-fi.  When he saw me in September,  back at art school, I asked why he didn't write back.  He thought my address was a joke and then told me that I was like a weed growing in the cracks of the city sidewalk.

That was when I lost interest.

Not long after I decided to call it quits with the US, may I get severely chastised by saying this an lose my citizenship,  I hope not.  Oh well, what I couldn't stand was walking down the corridors of the high school and hearing my colleague students talk like they were on TV.  I guess this dislike carried on too long.

In art school there were these kids that drove Mercedes to school and had jeans that were ripped on purpose to make them look artsy, perhaps I should use a French or an Italian word.  Alla carte, d'arte, j'en sais quoi  They were so damn boring.  I had to get out and find a real frustrating experience to make me feel alive so I moved to Florence, Italy.  Talk about bating at windmills.

I wanted to go to Paris but the guy I was in love with, at the time, lived in Florence.  He was plagued by a certain malessere, that went something like: I would rather read 12 newspapers a day than study for the  exam that will make me an architect instead of farting around spending my parents money while they live on 200 bucks a month and me 800, I'm too cool.

Despite his dis-ease with reality he was fun, for a while, and helped me spend those 400 bucks to purchase a super, 200E beige Vespa, which I used to ride into the Florentine Hills at 6 A.M. to paint the Tuscan countryside.  That was the beginning of my painting career, wow!

Alessandro Reggioli - the heart of

AlessAlessandro Reggioli began making hearts for a show called "Broken Hearts" that I hosted in my studio gallery in Florence, Italy February 14th, 2005.  A lot has changed since then.

I moved to France, started painting cityscapes with black on my palette and the anatomical heart has become one of Alessandro's most important icons.

This is a giant heart that was in an exhibition awhile ago in Certaldo.  The exhibition was also gigantic. Palazzo Pretorio in Boccaccio's Certaldo is an enourmous space that most artists would dream of filling in one lifetime let alone for a solo show.  Alessandro didn't blink an eye.

Alessandro sei grande!