For the third in the series of articles with the title “Barga at night” – the hidden side of Barga that people generally don’t see, we have something of a surprise. The artist Richard Clare read the first two articles, the bakery “Regio Bello” (article here) and the Pasticceria Lucchesi (article here) and decided that he too wanted to join the project with an idea that he had been thinking on for some time – painting Barga at night. So for the past week, he has been out and about with his easel and paints in various places in Barga Vecchia painting in the dark using just the available ambient street lighting.
The award winning photographer O’Connor ran into him at 2 am last night in Piazza Garibaldi as was working on the penultima of the series of small canvases. Today he finished his remarkable series with the last one just further down Via di Mezzo. He is now looking for a suitable place to exhibit these canvases before they are taken out of the country and split up.
Richard has often appeared on these pages since he moved to Barga with his family 6 years ago – In 2002 English landscape artist Richard Clare and his family came to Barga just for a holiday, but the magical beauty of Barga seduced them into buying a property here. Richard can often be seen wandering around Barga’s alleyways with his box of paints, sketching and painting plein-air. complete article with many images of his very colourful landscapes can be seen here
So how well do you know Barga? Can you name all of the places in his paintings? if so, maybe you can give Richard a hand as he wants to name the paintings, but is unsure what each location is called. Use the comments section at the end of this article.
The images of the paintings “Barga at Night” can be seen in larger format on the flickr site here and the Richard Clare site can be seen here
There is also a fairly lengthy interview with Richard recorded in Barga in the podcast – click below to listen.
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Wow!! They are great!!!! They are really wonderful and I can’t wait to see them in a gallery! We are going to go through to see if we can name the places. Imagine our surprise then when we got to Barga by night #6 and discovered our little rental Smart car that we had in Barga over the last couple of weeks, there is of course no mistaking the rental adds along the side! So number 6 has to be looking up Via della Speranza, oops we only parked there once, I promise!
Great stuff!!!
Jess
Bravo Richard! Another Flemish reference called to mind (apart from the ones we discussed at Casciani’s: Maurice Vlaminck, who also painted at night.
Great paintings Richard.
Allways a pleasure to see your new works.
Thanks for sending me the link.
Hope to see you soon and you can show me the great locations to paint from.
All the best
Helen
As it’s dark when you are painting and hence difficult to see. Do you mix the colours by memory or by eye. If by eye, are they the same colours in the daylight.
ps: Nice, whichever way…
Great stuff. Some of my favorite Barga moments were wandering around late at night — especially with my daughter — and actually stopping to look in all directions. These paintings are, of course, very evocative of those walks.
Lovely paintings Richard. Great use of colour and a real feel for that ‘gloomy’ light created by the sodium lamps in the town.
Bravo ! 🙂
Hello From the sunshinecoast in South East Queensland Australia,
We are a group of 6 working artists who call ourselves Women of wit and wisdom WOWW. We are all plien air painters who travel as a group. We will be in Barga from the 22nd Sept until the 6th Oct. We can be contacted via Artemesia Travel who have tailor made a trip for us. It would be great to meet some of the artists based in Barga.
The paintings look exciting and we certainly look fwd to walking the streets Of Barga!!!
Suggest you look up Sandra Rigali (painter) and Caterina Salvi (photographer). Their studio, ArtImmagine, is on the Via del Borgo. Both speak English, and will know many other local women artists. (article about them here)
emh, emh…