About the Tuscan Landscape Drawings...

Taking a break from the larger, more complex Dolls in the Window series of paintings and drawings done in Italy, I spent many days in the countryside doing small, plein air, charcoal drawings of the landscape. Most of these are close cropped views, intimate sections taken out of the context of vast landscapes-- a cluster of trees, furrows in a field, a valley in mist. I chose to do these in black and white avoiding the seduction of the sensual color so strongly associated with Tuscany, and used the texture of the rubbed charcoal to substitute for color and to replicate the rhythms and mysteries of the landscape. The resulting drawings appear, surprisingly, both photographic and abstract.

Most of the drawings were done in the area immediately around the house I lived in, small scenes I passed every day walking along the road between house and studio. These were helpful as studies for the painted landscapes in Dolls in the Window. The rest of the drawings were done in the area just below Siena called the Crete Senese, where patterns of rolling hills and wheat fields are punctuated by outcroppings of tufa rock and an occasional single tree or cluster of shrubs.