I love Italy! It was a love that happened by default. In the late 70’s a friend and I wanted to go to Greece, but the free tickets we had been given were destined for Roma, and we did not refuse. We had just finished working in a theater production in SF, and our spirits were high as we drove across the US to New York, making up songs and stopping at night to take over dance floors along the way. (We were both wild dancers). Then, in Roma, in the evenings we ventured out of our pensione with our faces painted, dressed in black, hair pulled tightly back in a bun, and me carrying my guitar; a cross between Martha Grahm and Dracula's daughters. For three nights in a row, crowds gathered around us in Piazza Navona, where we performed until le zingare, or the gypsy kids invaded our magic circle with their frolic. From there we roamed to the Pantheon where another, more tranquilla crowd gathered around us to hear my playing. Liking what they heard, three musicians invited us to lunch the next day.
I returned a number of times until Roma herself called me to live there. Roma chooses her inhabitants. My intention was to stay for a year or two, but because she is seductive and promises many things that she doesn’t always give you, two became twelve, and so that is why many of the titles of my paintings are in Italian.