Back in 2019, after a brief escape to Australia and the last time I saw and held my parents and Aussie friends in person – just a handful of months before the pandemic hit – I’d created a photographic exhibition of Australian native trees called The Map of a Notion of Home. 

I’ve lately revisited that “Notion of Home”, this time in the form of mountains. I’ve been working on a series of ink, watercolour and pencil impressions of mountains, both of Monte Amiata, southern Tuscany, and the various low lying mountains surrounding me where I grew up in Australia. 

Alongside my love of trees and the ocean, mountains have always been a part of who I am and where I live. In Australia my home was situated near an extinct volcano, and I find myself yet again on the flank of another dormant one. I recall seeing the Alps for the first time, at the border of France and Italy, my neck aching at all that “up”.

I still dream often of the Blue Mountains near Sydney, NSW, though my most prevalent childhood memories are of those ancient, flat-topped mountains presiding over the long-ago glacier-cut valley between Bullio and the Waragamba dam shining like a mirror at its far end. My little 110 film instamatic camera was put to good use when I was 13 years old, snapping at all that distance and space and antiquity, never quite able to be captured in any true capacity but in dreams.

And here I am again taking less than perfect photos! Well-overdue on my part (read: on the current Covid-ruffled part of my bank account), I’m waiting on a new laptop to replace my trusty several time rebuilt 9 year old that has finally refused to accept the SD card from my Nikon. And, as is Murphy’s Law, my cracked and ancient (yet extremely hardy, considering it outlived a merciless knock-it-off-all-the-things black cat and several skitterings down Italian stairwells) iPhone is pooping it, slowly. Still works – just – but now it limits and lessens image quality. No matter the amount of careful editing, you can’t beat decent skills, lighting, composition and hardware.

I never tire of the sunlight dressing and undressing Monte Amiata from morning until the moon takes over the shift, throughout every season. It seems absurd that I’ve been back here a full year and I still haven’t been to the summit of Monte Amiata in person since September 2019. It’s a shame not to have seen the snow up close this year. But, just like the sea, it’ll still be there, post-pandemic.

From a distance, rain clouds pour their hearts out over Monte Amiata, a blur of sudden water that traps the light as the sky touches down.

The minis are 7cm X 7cm before mounting and 35€ each, which includes shipping by tracked post to anywhere in the world. I’ve posted a selection of the minis in the “Artworks – Other” section of the blog, otherwise you can peruse all of them available on my website.

Thank you for supporting a living artist!
AB xx