Manarola Above the Sea
Manarola, one of the five villages of the Cinque Terre on the Ligurian coast, is among the most painted subjects in Italian landscape tradition, and this 2019 oil on canvas takes on that subject at a scale, 20 by 30 inches, generous enough to let the composition breathe. The village rises in its characteristic vertical stack of ochre, terracotta, and faded yellow facades above the rocky promontory that drops directly into the sea, a configuration that has drawn painters to this stretch of coastline for well over a century.
The technique is notably mixed in its approach. Palette knife work on the rooftops gives those passages a sculptural, impasto quality, the loaded blade dragging and pressing pigment into ridges that catch light differently from the surrounding brushwork. This contrast between the knife-built architecture and the presumably more fluid handling of sky and water creates a tactile hierarchy that pulls the eye toward the built forms first, letting the sea and light settle around them as atmosphere rather than subject.