I was in Rome again; it was the autumn of 2019. I was wearing a Victoria Grant hat—sleek, black, extravagant, and simple. A kind of super-hat, chosen specially for the aesthetically conscious Italians.
The Roman ladies were stopping me in the street to tell me how elegant it was, and as I spread the word about the enchanting London milliner, I realized I was starting to run late for the opening of my live painting performance, "A Cocktail in Rome / A Coffee Between Artists. " At G-rough gallery bar of the gorgeous art &design hotel in central Rome.
I was somewhere near Piazza del Popolo, having gone to look for the studio of the artist Luigi Ontani, whose atelier is located on a street nearby. Ontani was not to be found in the studio, so I looked for him at Café Rosati, the historical gathering place to the artists of the Arte Povera movement.
I wished to paint him, of course, during the performance, for he is one of Rome’s living artist legends. I had met him in my younger days, always recognizable in his splendid silk suits in flamboyant colors.
Luigi was not at the bar, so I left a letter at the studio with my number. I had lunch at ease—la pasta alla matriciana, which, to me, was an emotionally loaded recipe, reminding me of a certain Roman who loved it, when I loved him.
The whole return to Rome after such an absence felt a lot like walking in another version of my self.
Despite the changes in my life, eternal Rome still looked the same, and people I had met years before started to turn up, slipping back into the most natural friendship.
It suddenly dawned on me that my performance was in 30 minutes, and I had to run over to Piazza Navona, and next to it, the little Piazza Pasquino, where stands G-Rough, where the performance was to start.
Scolding myself for being too comfortable with time, I ran, puffing out of breath, across the cobbles in red suede heeled boots.
It was a street near the Valentino museum. A quiet street, where everything seemed closed and deserted at this particular hour, where, in a corner of a peeling, earth-colored building, I saw a very shinily decorated little door.
On the flung open door where hanging most unexpected array of objects. Very exotic. Not in the least Roman. There were bells and flags and things that glittered in gold, and my curiosity was roused, so I click-clacked across the street to peer into its dark insides.
The space was tiny, like a big wardrobe. The innards of the space were shadow, but the framing of this shadow was so shiny and out of the ordinary that I was drawn in to see better what lay there.
In the biggest shadow sat a man, a bald man. In front of him was a table upon which he was doing something. He greeted me. He was clearly a monk—a Buddhist monk.
“What is it that you do?” the monk asked.
“I am a painter, an artist. I’m doing a performance here in Rome,” I replied.
“Do you love what you do?” the monk asked.
“I love what I do. It is who I am. But it is difficult sometimes. I’m a mother. It is difficult to live from this sometimes.”
“What you do is very important for this world. È molto importante. Non lo dimenticare.”
“This is for you,” he said, placing incense sticks into my hand. “Every morning, light one and remember who you are. Say to yourself, I am an artist on my path, and light it.”
He then took another box of incense—of the same kind, the Nag Champa Agarbathi incense in a yellow box with red letters—and insisted I take them both.
And then, I left, for there was nothing I really wanted to buy—I was just curious. And I ran a kilometer to G-Rough, via the Colosseo, to start the performance on time.
Again, as the first time, I hoped—and was more convinced through experience—that the Buddhist monk must have meant a blessing.
Of course, he was.
That particular performance was sponsored by my friend from "La Famiglia" the art collector Gabriele Salini, who hosted me and the performance in his beautiful boutique design & art hotel.
The performance was in the Gallery Bar on the street level, and this time, live, I painted while the wonderful G-Rough cocktail masters made us drinks and tiny butter pizzas.
While I painted, Assia de Baudi, the Italian writer and collaborator on the project, was in close proximity, unobtrusively listening to the conversations between myself and the other artists I was painting.
Assia, myself, and G-Rough started to collaborate with a desire to create a coffee table book, in which woud appear the portraits I was painting the Roman artists—many of whom have art work in this art and design hotel, and represent a part of the Contemporary Roman art scene.
At G-Rough, I painted portraits from life of the artists: Pietro Pasolini, Zazie, Guendalina Salini, Francesca Del Gatto, Francesca Dusica, Francesca Romana Pinzari, Giuli Pidodoro, Marco Raparelli, Flavio Del Marco, Valerie Gianpietro, Alessandro Ciccorria, Alessandro Piangiamore, Thomas Hutton, Mario Del Mare, Luca Padroni, and Antonello Viola.
The artist Enzo Cucchi appeared every day and observed the live performance from the bar, but when asked if I could paint him, he flat-out refused. Capricious as I sometimes am, I painted him anyway—for the gallery bar had mirrored walls, and he watched me paint him from his reflection. It was a sort of capricious double act from both of us. He was glad I did it, or he wouldn’t have allowed it.
Luigi Ontani on the other hand telephoned and invited me for breakfast at Rosati Bar the following day, where, amidst the rush of the morning caffè goers, with his Tuscan gallerist present as well as a young celebrity photographer from London, I painted him as we broke the fast. He was so satisfied with the portrait that he asked me to give it to him. Flattered by the great artist- I gave him the portrait.
On the way to paint him and back form the painting I walked past the little magic door of the Buddhist monk, which was shut, and so plain from the outside, with nothing interesting to it whatsoever. It looked as if it had not been opened for years.
On the first night of the performance, while still relatively incognito to the Romans, I had wandered out of G-Rough and towards Piazza Farnese, which I loved dearly, having lived very close to it and having experienced quite a bit of my earlier life there.
I remembered eating my first-ever raw meat—tartare—there, quite by accident. A journalist had invited me to dinner, and when I asked him to recommend something to eat, I unknowingly ordered it. An on-and-off vegetarian, I was extraordinarily terrified when, unaware of what this dish actually was, I watched the waiter ceremoniously prepare this raw meat and raw egg specialty for me. Out of politeness, I had to try it, and I was absolutely shocked at how much I liked it.
I walked over the cobbles to the square and across it, wearing high heels and the emperor’s hat, when—ho!—someone stopped me from Bar Caponeschi. "Vieni qua!" he demanded in the imperative. "Ecco l’imperatore di Giappone," he said, proceeding to explain how he had watched the coronation of the Emperor of Japan that very day and that my hat was just like the emperor’s.
The words belonged to a familiar face that reeled in my memory storage until I remembered the incident some 15 years before, when I a 22 year old, had met the famous man at a collector's elegant exhibition afterparty and had stolen a Cuban cigar from his mouth whilst he was mid conversation—just because he was the notorious art critic and curator Achille Bonito Oliva- and I wanted to tease him- or simply and have him notice me - the young artist.
Achille invited me to sit at the table with him and his numerous friends, had wine brought to me, and, within a few sentences, found out who I was, what I was doing in Rome, and—perhaps to test my competence—he invited me to come and paint him from life the next morning in his house.
When he left, the grand man that he is, it was up to his friends to fill me in with details, address, and their shock at something like this occurring in the first place. Achille Bonito Oliva does not do this sort of thing— Paolo explained, and the fact that he had invited me to paint him, in his house, the next day, was a great honor and an exception.
The following day, I awoke early, had breakfast at the gorgeous artsy hotel home for the duration of the performance, and walked over to the street the infamous Italian art critic resides on. I stopped at a tiny old man's bar the kind Rome is full of and had a prosecco to help me chill out, for Achille was a big deal when I was a young artist and still is in Italy and internationally. I was curious to get to know who he is behind all the legends.
The door of the elegant palazzo apartment was opened by a lady and I was served coffee in Achille's living room, surrounded by artworks from many art masters of the last century and stacks of books. He sat in front of me in a living room so impeccably clean that I was relieved my watercolors, at this point, no longer made a mess while painting. The greatest Italian Critic i was warned about in my younger days, and I talked for an hour as I painted. I did not feel fear, and the portrait turned out perhaps younger and sharper, as I had expected him to be- during the dialogue learned about Achille's journey in art—how his passion for it began, and which artists and families we had both worked with. Then we took a photo of him and the painting. He said he liked it. And I retuned to G-rough to paint the artistes tightly booked, to fill in as much of my time with actual painting, before my return to Split.
One of the nights, I was swept up by the artists I had painted for the performance—Valeria Gianpietro and Alessandro Ciccorria—who took me to dinner, with Mario Del Mare, and a European prince in disguise, and a few other artists in tow. We had a wonderful night of dancing in some club. Another evening, I was taken to the house of an art journalist for a house party, and when I arrived, I was surprised by how many people I knew. It amazed me that this bustling social life I had left—my Roman life, almost two decades ago—had carried on always in unceasing parties and art.
This time, I had arrived in Rome by ship—sailing from Split to Ancona, then by train—carrying two large portraits of my art patrons at the time, the Formilli-Fendi couple. One was a silk satin and concrete portrait of La Rodro, and the other, concrete and oils on Irish linen, was of Andrea.
Missing the first train because of the traffic as Flavio drove me to the station, I almost missed the boat home, and almost wanted to , for I liked feeling a part of this Roman reality where there fact I was an artist was normal. I now left Rome with photographs of the portraits I had completed of the Roman artists, along with incredible reconnections, and the life stories of artists residing in Rome, with plans to return and complete the project.
Some artists were hesitant about being painted—it’s strange to be asked, isn’t it to be painted form life in a bar? To some, it sounds corny, like street caricatures. But the moment of painting is magical, almost alchemical. Every artist who participated thanked me for the experience, the dialogue, and the exchange.
I was grateful to hear the incredible ideas and inspirations of so many brilliant and sensitive souls—to learn how they feel, how they work, and who they are.
Since the encounter with the Second Buddhist monk, every morning, I light that very brand of incense stick—using the gas flame that also brews my morning coffee—and say to myself:
"I am an artist on my path."
As incredible as it is, its the thing I seem to keep reminding myself of in Croatia.
The familiarity of this scent has become sacred to me. My home smells of this incense every morning ever since.
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