Performance Anxiety in Florence

In a city brimming with art, ranging from kitsch to the spectacular, there is a certain amount of anxiety involved in sitting in a public place to sketch. I sometimes carry a small box of watercolors when I travel, and I occasionally grab my courage and break them out where people can see me.

You see, I know the other side of the game… I often stop to watch public artists in action. I like to observe how they construct the composition, how much time it takes, how they mix the colors. The artist in Montmartre that drew my friend Alexis a couple of years ago spent the most amount of time on her getting her eyes just right (being the windows to the soul and all that) and cleverly chose a lovely burnt sienna conte crayon to best capture her pre-Raphaelite hair.

Another facet of the observation is the unavoidable formation of judgment. Is it proportionate? Are the colors right? Are they out of the tube or are they made complex through combinations? Is the perspective off? Does the artist actually have the chops for this public performance?

So with this in mind, I sat on an outcropping of the Strozzi Palace today and tried my hand at a quick sketch. I don’t draw all that well, nor all that confidently (being a word person, I tend to write my ideas out rather than sketch them). But I was taught to draw by a master technician, the late (and great) Frank Sardisco. Know to some of us as “Professore,” he had a penchant for crying “Mama Mia!” when he was cheering on a good drawing or painting, or aghast at a disaster. He demanded the very best of his students, no matter their skill level, and taught us to draw in a technical, nuts and bolts way. By the time he was done with us we knew how to break down just about anything to draw it passably. He was a man of many sayings, and frequently used “You don’t learn to draw by talking about it” on us when we whined about the heavy homework load.

He was right, of course. Only the truly gifted shine on their first outing – the rest of us must practice, practice, practice to mold our gifts or make it to Carnegie Hall, and even sweatily perform that practice in public at times. What matters most is that we show up and try - we’re just not going to get better if we don’t. So here’s my humble offering to the art gods today… I didn’t just talk about it – I painted!