sketching in florence

I’m recently back from a trip to Florence, Italy where I met up with friends from the local Urban Sketchers community. USKFirenze is a vibrant group of passionate sketchers, and for this year’s Spring Festival they invited me to give a couple workshops over the long weekend. I only know a few words of Italian, certainly not enough to conduct a class, so I was lucky to work with a wonderful translator, Poalo, who seamlessly transformed my thoughts into beautifully descriptive Italian. Between workshops and sketch crawls, there were lunches, apéro, and dinners late into the night. English, French, Italian, Romanian, and who-knows-what-other languages flying through the air! We can laugh, and toast, and share sketchbooks together. Our common language is art!

I’ve always loved Florence, from the first time I was here many years ago as a student. I clearly remember stepping off the train after a few chaotic days in Rome, into the quiet streets of Florence. It felt like a magical place. Now, many years later, this city can be overrun by tourists, sidewalks are packed, museum tickets sold-out, insane queues for sandwich shops… but beneath it all there is still a powerful magic that this place has held since the Renaissance. Walking these streets I feel the ghosts of Michelangelo and DaVinci, the whispers of Dante, and the great sweeps of history that have washed over this city. Despite the crowds on this latest visit, I had the best meal of my life in an unassuming restaurant down a quiet side street - gnocchi with beetroot glaze, chianti, tiramisu - the flavors of this city are enough to make you question your life choices.

I love reading histories and biographies set in the places I travel, and this time I brought with me a copy of Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography, My Life. Cellini lived and worked in Florence in the 15th century and is best knows for his bronze sculpture of Perseus now standing in the Loggia overlooking Piazza della Signoria. Dipping into this book peels back the centuries and I’m confronted by the artist in all his pride and volatility.

“…my courage mounted and I said to myself: If God grants me sufficient grace to finish my Perseus, I hope with this work to overcome all my rascally enemies: I shall, in this way, take much greater and more glorious revenge than if I had taken it out on one man alone.”

He’s a force of nature! His presence is clear as a bell, complaining about commissions, bickering with rivals, never having enough time to work on his masterpiece. Ah, the life of an artist. It’s brilliantly refreshing to catch a glimpse into the soul of this volatile artist and the often turbulent process behind these creations. Cellini lived in an insanely competitive environment, he was surrounded by the masterpieces of the Renaissance, and his patrons were princes and popes. This pressure cooker world of art and commerce spurred him on to greatness.

This weekend at least, the stakes are much lower. Fellow artists come together to share moments of camaraderie, laughter, and meals. The sketching community is incredibly encouraging and inviting. It’s inevitable that we compare our works in progress to everyone else’s finished product, but I don’t feel the bite of competition. It’s more a gentle nudge to go deeper, pay closer attention, and catch fleeting moments in the pages of our sketchbooks.

Cellini’s voice swirls together in my mind with all the others from this weekend, in all their different languages. Voices from across time and culture, voices from across the street, voices in the here and now shared over coffee. There’s a place for competition in art, but this weekend at least was about honing our skills through sharing and gentle learning. Rather than “rascally enemies,” we’re a group of friends brought together by our love of sketching and painting.

Thank you Florence, and thank you to new friends and old. Here’s to the places that still resonate with the echoes of history, and where magic still flows. Ciao!

If you’re interested in going further and deepening your watercolor practice (or if you’d just like to support what I’m doing) I invite you to my Patreon Page. There you’ll get a peek behind the scenes of my studio and my process, members-only live demos, and other exclusive goodies!

Thank you for being a part of this artistic community! I’m so glad you’re here!

Cheers from Paris,

Alex

AlexHillkurtzArt.com

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