Gallery Apodaca Blog: More Work, September 2023

It has started to rain, with nonstop thunder claps, so a good time to work on a blogpost.

Boy, when a summer storm moves in here, the temperature drops about 10 degrees. It's a nice change, though we're stuck inside for awhile!

Johnny has been working almost every day this past week, even when we made a trip to Florence on Wednesday. It's good to see him start getting warmed up, and now he has most of what he needs as far as art supplies go. The trip to Florence was mostly about getting more supplies for the studio, and for plein-air painting.

On a walk earlier in the week, he took a couple of breaks to do some sketching...

Just outside the walls of Cortona...

He will often add watercolor to these sweet little sketches later, or use them as ideas for larger studio works.

Later in the week, we hopped the morning train to Florence. There are a couple of great art supply stores in the city, and we've gotten to know the folks who work there. We had made an order by email to pick up, and sure enough it was all ready to go when we arrived to the shop.

Johnny had brought some of his gear to paint, so he set up to paint while I took some photos...and then a walk.

This is the restored "Loggia del Pesce". You can learn the history of this beautiful structure here. We love this area, and since it was still fairly early, not too many people were around.

There is always a lot of equipment to haul around
when Johnny paints outdoors...

Setting up the palette.

And....start.

I took a nice stroll around the neighborhood, and was surprised to see how much he had painted when I returned.

Johnny paints in the moment, very spontaneous and with instinct. He often says that the painting paints itself, and he is just the conduit.

It's kind of a magic spot...

Almost finished.

We'll get the finished paintings posted at some point near the end of the trip. Many of these pieces will be for a show here in Umbria next spring/summer. Stay tuned!

A day or two later, we headed out to an area that Johnny has painted many times over the years. There is always something here to inspire him. Every direction you look is beautiful.