What excitement. I am about to publish my first book in a series I will call Travel Tales at the Easel. After 21 years of painting and writing about my travels to paint in Venice, IT, I am finally going to press this week. I want to stand at the end of the large press at Printing Partners in Indianapolis when the first copy rolls out and I will see my story and paintings all in vivid color and printed on a fine semi-glass paper. Then the next – and the next – all 1,000 lovely books.
Most of the writing was done two years ago although I started writing about my adventures in Venice in 1985. Fortunately, I was a newspaper journalist and have writing experience as well as art training. Writing, rewriting, editing and reediting – and more writing -have consumed me and my editor John Sherman at Mesa Verde Press in Indianapolis for the past two years. He helps me check art facts and word, selecting placement of stories and painting techniques. I rework phrasing, finding just the right verbs.
Diana Gisolfo, direction of Pratt’s Art History Department, lent her extensive knowledge of Venetian art history. I also have returned to Venice several times during the writing to ask more questions of her glorious past and fulfill my own knowledge of Venice as an ideal place to paint.
During those sojourns, I met garden designer Tudy Sammartini, author of Secret Gardens of Venice. We became friends and just two months before she died in August, 2016, she wrote the forward for this book. She was a legend in Venice – and in my heart.
So, the story of my adventures in Venetian gardens and the Renaissance is coming off the press. It is expensive (I dare not say how much!) but is worth it.
I am fortunate among plein air painters to tell my story of painting in the great outdoors. The adventure in painting never ends. My next book will explore my trips to paint in the South Pacific. And, of course, I have visited every beach and village in Tahiti and the Marquesas where Paul Gauguin painted his poetic paintings. I even wept at his gravesite. Yet, I still have to write “our” stories of that great Pacific adventure.
For now, I am paying homage to Venice with each painting that stands by itself as a complete entity. So, I send my paintings – and their story – on to readers who love art, art history, gardens, travel and adventure.
-Rosanna Hardin Hall, September 2017
Poesia: Painting in Venetian Gardens with Giorgione will be available after October 1st
Also, please be our guest at one of our two book launch events in October:
Thursday, October 19th – 7:00-9:00pm at Villa dell’ Artista | Woodruff Place in Indianapolis
Wednesday, October 25th – 7:oopm at IndyReads Bookstore on Massachusetts Avenue in Indianapolis