I washed my feet, as soon as I got into the apartment. After a while I felt as if the dirt on my feet, was a residue, dragged on to the ground, from history. At times I felt that my feet were turning into sponges, gathering the history left behind. When I sat down to draw, the earth under my feet , beckoned me to draw their spirit on to my watercolor, brava! What was I really painting?
There is a strange magic in Rome, violent and masculine as if the sculptures was destine to come from the ground up. The light is crisp, like a chisel, touching marble. There is a heaviness in the air and yes, Alora is the common catch all phrase.
One more building that tells a story of one more piazza to gather with strangers and loved one, another bridge in the horizon, displaying ornate sculptures. Where do you look? Everywhere. Where do you stop? You don’t.
Taking long walks in Trestevere I hunted for images, waiting for one to pop out between two buildings. Walking up the incline between Piazza di Spagna and Piazza del Popolo I stopped to draw with watercolor; imagining Poussin strolling down the lane, my mind conjured up us meeting as he stopped to talk to me.
The strangest feelings would come over me, as I drew and painted from these icons built hundreds of years ago. I was being reminded, of what it is to be human, physically present and alive on this earth, wrestling with one of the seven deadly sins.
There wasn’t a day I didn’t want to draw. But when that day came, I was over whelmed with the sheer volume of ideas. I walked back to my apartment, starring down at the ground, just one idea on top of another, like the Elephant Piazza Minerva with in reach of the Pantheon.
Magic, teasing our sense of scale and narrative, this I found in abundance in Rome.
Liliana Perez, Student 2011
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