Sassi, Italy

42 x 29.5cm
Helen Bellany
£600

2018

Watercolour on paper, suffused with the artist’s memories of this region of Italy –

“… Soon we were off on evening trips up the mountains, swaying round the precipitous hairpin bends towards the restaurant in the village of Sassi, perched on the dizzy ridges far above the valley. Sometimes, at sunset and on foot, we would climb even higher to the gently illuminated campanile standing alone on a rocky outcrop. This overlooked the winding road far below through the marble mountains that separated us from the Mediterranean coast which we could just glimpse. On journeys back from the sea along that road in the valley below, the sight of the campanile of Sassi, the beacon of its tower high above us, told us that we were nearly through the mountains and home again in Garfagnana.”

– from the artist’s memoir, ‘The Restless Wave: My Two Lives with John Bellany’