I have given up being a conceptual artist on my Bellagio residency. This beautiful little town clinging to the banks of Lake Como is too far removed from reality, a ferry ride to the nearest train station. Lake Como was once the highway of northern Italy, carrying traders, silk merchants, diplomats and scurrilous adventurers from one end of the lake to the other, but today the travelers are nearly all tourists, bent on buying a beautiful Missoni scarf before tucking into lunch at a waterfront café.
Yesterday I heard a loud English voice under my studio window, and opened the shutters to find a group of tourists gazing up at me.
So I climb up instead to the hill below the Villa, spreading a cloth to sit on, and setting out my watercolours. Ahead lies the difficult decision of wondering whether to attempt to paint the rapidly changing patterns of the ferry trails on the water, or whether to settle for the obligingly stationary olive and cypress trees.
The cicadas have struck up their summer song, the scent of wild thyme has been released as I settle myself, and I try to position my water jar so that not too many ants drown themselves today.
Later, I will lunch off the delicious saturnine peaches that have the shape of squashed doughnuts, and go swimming at the edge of the lake.
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