A Walk in the Snow in Bagni di Lucca

Scrinch scrunching in the snow.  The world silent and soft, surrounded in a white haze, gentle flakes caressing your face and freezing your hair.  That day of snow falling endlessly was so beautiful.  We walked up to Bagni Caldi delighting in the mysterious panoramas surrounding us, and down to Ponte a Serraglio, more beautiful than

Winter in Tuscany

We love winter in Tuscany.  We arrived home in early December with snow flakes falling.  A frosty white world greeted us in Pieve dei Monti di Villa and we were no sooner there than we were walking up the cobbled street paths of the next little village upwards, Monti di Villa, to see a Presepe

Jacob Cartwright, Guy Dowsett and Henna Kaikula performing ‘Reflections’ at La Rondine Gallery

Piano and clarinet burring insistently, drops of sweet notes like water tinkling in a bowl, a little bit sad, reflective, pensive.  Her body rises and falls like a pendulum, seductive with the same graceful fluidity of a cat, her contortions elevated to a beautiful dance, a body without boundaries.  The performance of music and contortion

La Rondine – a new gallery in Ponte a Serraglio

Swooping through the air, their forked tails and pointed wings in silhouette against brilliant blue skies, they arrive in spring and leave in autumn, busy all summer long, tending their babies and devouring the myriad of insects floating over the fields and waterways, chirping socially through the balmy twilight evenings on top of their nests

Festa di Sant’ Anna, in the mountains of Bagni di Lucca

Puttering up the winding mountain road today on the vespa, we stopped at breathtaking vistas from the top of Monti di Villa overlooking the valley between the Appenines and the great craggy mounts of the Apuans.  We were in those craggy mountains yesterday on our way to Carrara to partake in a cultural evening with

Spring in Tuscany

Lime green bursting from their buds.  Every day out in the garden, hard to stay indoors where the shadows are still cold and the massive stone walls still breath out the damp.  As the sun hits our patch of earth we dart in and out of the studio, loathe to miss its seductive warmth.  But

Thank you 2011

It has been an amazing year.  We have loved it.  We have been living in Hong Kong for the most part of it; Thailand for a month, Italy over the summer and autumn.  Our boys have accomplished great things, placing their feet firmly on their journey and our art has thrived and we have some

Sojourn on Tuscany’s Wild Capraia

I have so much to catch up.  I want to write and say that we are here in Hong Kong but the sensory flavours of Italy are still filling my palette and I can’t yet settle down to the low down on Hong Kong. Sorry. My heart is still in Capraia. It’s Mike’s birthday and

The Bernabo Thermal Spa of Bagni di Lucca

Today the old Bernabo thermal baths were open to the public for viewing, completely refurbished with all the massage tables and oils and candles and gently running water into ancient marble baths. I wish I could ‘write’ smell and sound.  All our senses were cocooned in the perfumes of oils and music that wrapped themselves

Our roof festa in Pieve dei Monti di Villa

This summer has been busy for us renovating our old properties.  One of the loveliest things we have done is to put a new roof on our little Pieve dei Monti di Villa village house.  The roof has been leaking gently for the last 8 years since we had had it repaired the first time(!),