So FRESH.....Fresco

Ok, yah.....so I'm living and dreaming in the past lately, but this is MY blog and documentation of MY projects and dreams, so I think it's okay to re-live and remember happy times.  I have had a passion for painting murals on walls since I was 15.  I painted my first murals at a pediatric clinic way back then.  In Florence, I learned to first paint frescoes, then restore them.  WOW!  What an opportunity!  What a DREAM come true!  I had no idea how much I would fall in love with the fresco process.  Frescoes are paintings in wet plaster that you will commonly find in the old churches in Europe.  There aren't really frescoes here in the USA for me to restore, so occasionally I will flip through pics and daydream.  I'll keep this one short--the pics tell the story.

So this first picture on the upper right I am probably up about 30 feet in an old church on Via Faenza called Chiesa di San Jacopo.  The first step in fresco restoration was cleaning.  This was pre-ipod time.....I would break out my portable CD player, sit with my legs hanging over the ledge and work away.  I generally get really weak in the knees with heights, but not painting/fresco restoring--takes me to another world.  Alicia Keys was just making it big about this time--she was my favorite to slip off into a trance to and work away.  She still is one of my favorites--beautiful and real lyrics.  I listened to Laura Pausini and other international artists, as well.....ah....miss that!  This fresco I was working on was 16th-17th century, I believe.

 This is a picture from my restoration scrapbook...hard to see, it just tells the layers of the wall and shows a pic of the pigments we used.



Another scrapbook picture--this was when I learned how to actually paint a fresco--the whole process.  Class pic on the top.  Lorenzo, my professor, was AWESOME.  The man is married to art restoration.  He teaches at the school and restores art through the Pitti Palace in Florence and all over Italy--as well, as the world.  Such a surreal opportunity!  Again, I have the best parents for supporting me in this adventure.

This is one of my first completed fresco paintings.  I believe it is a recreation of a section of Botticelli's "La Primavera"...part of the Three Graces.  As you can see, I hit the detail ok, the problem is that the fresco dried and I didn't have a grasp on pigment matching once the fresco was dry.  Fresco painting is much more complicated in color matching than any other medium that I have worked with, in my opinion.



Clearly, I did much better after a little practice on this guy.  Color looks much, much better.  This is what I refer to as my fresco baby.  I think my mom has him framed and hanging at her house somewhere.

 This is another scrapbook shot.  Just part of the angels and columns that we worked on.

                                 Closer view of filling in the cracks and preparing to fill in the color.

Lorenzo, my professor, showing us how it was done.

Clearly Principessa here had probably spent to much time at the discoteca the night before...Either Salsa dancing or techno shaking...and I'm sure there was absolutely no alcohol or smelly Italiano boys involved...nah.  No way....Nothing a big cappuccino and bomboloni couldn't fix!  So there you have it.  Nursing was not my first experience with syringes and cloves.  We had to palpate and auscultate for hollow spots in the wall where the old fresco was detaching.  We then cleaned and re-sealed the fresco to the wall.  That's some sort of adhesive in that syringe.

Just another practice fresco painting...I definitely did a good job making her look old and aged!  Another of the three graces, I believe.....

I still dream of fresco painting, scaffolding, cappuccino, and vino rosso.....

-Sweet dreams....