Journal

Gardenia 2020 diary

I was really pleased to illustrate Gardenia magazine’s annual diary.

It’s the third time – my third year painting the months in watercolour – but this project has been particularly close to my heart due to the inspiration behind it.

It all began with a project involving the Fondazione Catella and the new Milan city park in Porta Nuova, BAM – Parco Biblioteca Degli Alberi (Library of Trees).

❥ Additionally, it was within that same incredible space – where so many meet and cohabit harmoniously – that two watercolour workshops were carried out in September, entitled “I Campi Urbani” (Urban Fields). Two open-air sessions devoted to lifelike depictions in an exceptional setting designed by landscape painters, including Petra Blaisse, Piet Oudolf, and others. I’m talking about it HERE

Gardenia asked me to paint some of the many botanical species contained in the Library of Trees, month by month.

I experienced the seasons of the year and the transformations they undergo.

I was taken aback by the variety of shrubs, trees, and small and large perennial plants whose shapes define this space with their infinite shades of colour.

Botanical variety brings variety in wildlife and there is so much of it in the artworks used for the diary.

During my first visit last winter, I was amazed to see the frenzied flight of sparrows chasing each other down the rows of paperbark maple, before nosediving into the clouds of grass species.

This means that leafing through the diary – just as while taking a walk – you can find the subjects of a vast project: January and its panicgrass, August and its beebalms. The equinox and solstice months are devoted to the trees that give the park its name. To end the year, two choral spreads.

All the artwork – completed over the course of the year – is watercolour on paper.

They will be exhibited to the public when the Gardenia diary is released on Thursday 7 November 2019 at the Galleria Salamon Fine Art in Milan.

❥ Info: Galleria Salamon Fine Art, via San Damiano 2, Palazzo Cicogna – Milano
Mob. +39 335 5894 218; Tel. +39 02 7601 3142 ; email: gallery@salamonfineart.com