Climbing Up the Mountain

An olive grove on a sunlit slope, in loose strokes of turquoise, olive green, cream and warm earth: each tree, with its curved trunk, is halfway to becoming a patch of color in the heat of a Mediterranean summer day.

An expressive Italian landscape painted in loose, energetic brushstrokes. Olive trees, rising ground, and blue-green shadows create a vivid sense of movement and light, while soft cream, olive, turquoise, and warm earth tones give the work a Mediterranean atmosphere. Painted in an intuitive, emotional manner, this piece balances landscape and abstraction, suggesting the experience of climbing upward through sunlit countryside.

I have always been drawn to liminal states, in this case to the boundary between figuration and abstraction. The tree, the olive tree, still retains its defining traits — the curved trunk, the silvery crown — yet it is gradually becoming a patch of color, a sign of a tree. The same happens to the vineyards on the slope. And the whole landscape, this olive grove so familiar to me, while preserving its shimmering color under the heat of a summer day, becomes a sign of the Mediterranean landscape.