Andiamo/Allons-y: Summer in the Cities of Italy and France showcases a series of paintings inspired by observations of the architecture, daily life, and nature in more than a dozen cities across Italy and France. Most of the paintings were created outdoors, on location, and range from watercolor to mixed-media and acrylic mediums.
Exhibited at Wild Goose Creative Gallery November 15 – 29, 2023.
“Most of the works were created en plein air (on site outdoors) while composer, Lauren Spavelko and I lived abroad this summer,” says local artist Michelle Boerio. “The goal was to explore, make art and seek out nature in the urban environment. We started in Paris and Lyon, France, then moved on to Italy, experiencing the cities of Turin, Bologna, Verona, Venice, Rimini, Parma, Florence, Rome, Pompeii, Naples and Positano.”
Boerio’s work is fluid, expressive and confident. She uses watercolor, acrylic and mixed media to capture not just moments of nature in the city, but also the sense of place, from the heat of the day to the historical character of the architecture.
Boerio explains the reason for the show. “These are the remarkable kind of experiences you want to share. There were surprises everywhere. One painting is about an evening when we listened to a classical music trio play in a medieval church courtyard as bats came out to fly overhead. I hope the viewer will get a feel for what it was like to live a normal kind of daily life in a wonderfully different context.”
