exploring eating capturing
Florence is one of my favourite city’s in Italy. It has everything, food, art, architecture, a river, amazing views and friendly people. It is also relatively small so most places are walkable. La Specola is the oldest public museum in Europe and was founded in …
For many many years I have been making flapjack. Some time in the 1970’s my mum found a recipe on the back of a packet of oats that worked really well. We then lived on flapjack for years and it became famous with our friends. …
My friends house in Italy is very beautifully put together. There are lots of lovely objects and arrangements to look at everywhere you turn. One ingenious idea is the use of an old ladder high on a wall in the kitchen to hang all the pots and pans from. Another was a set of interesting tins that have cacti growing out of them. Both subjects that needed to be drawn.
I am a bit of a scavenger. I can’t walk past a skip without having a look, you just never know what might turn out to be just the thing you always needed but never knew! All Italian houses have a cantina which is kind …
I am a keen user of the cyanotype process. It is essentially like an early photographic process that doesn’t need a camera, just the light from the sun. It is a lovely and relatively simple way to document objects and have a memory of a …
Fresh eggs from your own hens every day is wonderful! What happens when you have too many what can you do with them? I knew my friends hadn’t had a proper curry for sometime so went prepared with garam masala, turmeric and a chunk of root ginger. It turns out you can get root ginger in Italy but not the other two very easily. So the perfect solution seemed to be an egg curry. When I served this my friends went very quiet. Fortunately it was just because they were so pleased to have the proper taste of curry for the first time in ages!
Egg Curry
I love courgettes, especially fresh newly grown ones from the garden. My friends in Italy are not so keen but happened to mention to their 80 something year old neighbour (who still grows all her fruit and veg!) that their visitor was a keen courgette …
I have just had a wonderful few weeks in Palombaro a small town in the Abruzzo region of Italy. This area is central and to the east of Rome stretching to the coast. I have been staying with my friends who moved here two years …
Drawing takes me to my happy place. It is a very personal way to document a journey, experience or encounter. My marks are unique to me and hopefully convey something which adds another dimension to my stories. I usually travel with at least a sketchbook and a couple of fine liner pens and a well used compact travel watercolour set.
