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Although it's been 18 months since our trip to Italy, looking through my reference photos puts me right back in Venice or Florence.  This piece commemorates an evening trip back into Venice from our lodging on the Lido for a late evening meal on the Grand Canal.  As the sun sank as we headed its direction on the water, the variety of evening clouds took on a strange orange, yellow and brown cast, while the sea appeared dark green.  

Our good friends and traveling "hosts," the Yapps, recalled eating at a certain restaurant five years earlier they thought we'd like.  In the dark, however, all the vaporetto stops looked similar, so we searched several side alleys with the sense of "it must be just around this next corner."  Try as we might, we never found the intended spot, but settled in for a lovely pizza under umbrellas on the sidewalk.

The Whetstone Park of Roses in Columbus, Ohio has an annual "Rose Festival."  The last couple of years, Bill Westerman has shaken the bushes and raised some money for prizes for which the Central Ohio Plein Air had to compete.  I did two pieces that morning, and this one just didn't "have it."  It sat around for a few months, then "stirred to the top" in my piles of stuff.  A quick reassessment convinced me that reworking a few areas would salvage the piece.  At our recent "Friends and Family Open House and Sale" a couple of weeks back, it was the first piece purchased by one of our delightful patrons!

—Jim