Beneath the olive tree

July’s letter to paid subscribers 🌿

“The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.”

— Mary Shelley

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Dear friends,

Somehow, after nearly twenty years of traveling through more than 50 countries, it wasn’t until last month that I made it to mainland Italy for the first time.

It was an impossibly short trip — just two nights, as Jose is in the middle of quite a busy season at work — and the focus of our time there was family. Jose’s father was turning 60, and he had decided to celebrate his birthday at a historic bed and breakfast that Jose’s aunt and uncle just so happen to own in Umbria.

Even still, I looked at Jose the night before our trip and asked if there might be a way for me to carve out the smallest window of time — just an hour or two at most — to do my first ever on-location painting of Italy.

And in true Jose fashion, he looked back at me and said, “Of course.”

From the moment we landed, I was on the lookout for the perfect subject.

Perhaps I would paint the poppies we spotted on early morning walks with the girls, before anyone else had yet to rise and we’d pick bouquets of wildflowers, reveling in a world that felt like it was ours and ours alone.