Pastel landscape painting of the river that runs through the city Prato in Italy.

Pastel painting 11  inches x 17 inches    SOLD

A couple of years a go I visited Amsterdam and Prato, Italy with my friend Susan. We stayed in Prato’s ancient central Piazza. On days when we weren’t exploring Florence or the Tuscan countryside, we would wander the old streets and riverbanks of the city. This scene really captured my imagination. I painted an Italian watercolor painting of it on site and enlarged it into a pastel painting later in my studio. This view probably looks exactly the same as it looked hundreds of years ago. That’s part of what I find fascinating about Italy. So much of the city and countryside has been untouched by our modern architecture. I am sure that is both a blessing and a curse to current Italians, but it is a joy to the traveler!

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This artwork was created with:
Paper: Terra Cotta Art Spectrum Pastel Paper
Medium: Rembrandt Pastels and Sennelier Pastels

Pastel landscape painting of the wide river that winds through Prato, Italy.

Pastel painting 6.5 inches x 6.5 inches     $100

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

I’ve done hundreds of watercolor paintings of Italy, but no pastel paintings. For some reason, I’ve always visualized Tuscany only as a watercolor subject. The other day, I thought I’d try a scene of Prato, the small town I visited a few years ago, this time in pastel. My friend Susan and I stayed in the old city center for a week a couple of years ago. On our last day there, we took a long walking tour and stopped to sketch along this beautiful river. My current obsession with water and reflections made this view a perfect one to experiment with for a pastel landscape.

Watercolor painting 10 inches x 19 inches    $500

Please contact me if you are interested in similar artwork.

I’ve finally started working on Tuscan watercolors again. My friend, Susan, and I visited Italy last year and I have a lot of images swirling in my head, waiting to be painted. This beautiful fountain was in the a square near the center of Prato. We’d walk by it 2 or 3 times a day. In the morning, the square would be filled with mamas and their bambini, in the afternoon, kids fresh out of school would congregate there, and in the evening it was alive with young people partying. And its been there for hundreds and hundreds of years!