Painting the via Francigena

Just over a year ago, I was leisurely browsing YouTube when I came across a tutorial showing how to draw a bird using an iPad. It was a crow, to be precise, and it looked intriguing. 

Twenty five years earlier in New York City, I had just ended my dream of being a professional rock musician, after many years of trying. My band had come to a natural end and I found myself searching for another creative outlet. 

When I was young, my dad was interested in painting and I think it rubbed off me a bit. In the back of my mind, I wanted to give it a try but, at that time, music came along and everything else took a back seat.

So now, with the band gone, it was time to explore a new passion. A deep dive into the world of art sounded fun. My favorite artists were masters of oil on canvas so that seemed to be the logical choice for me. I visited Utrecht in Chinatown, picked up some basic art supplies and started painting.

With a lot of hard work and practice, I began to create some half decent work. I painted furiously into the night sometimes forgoing sleep while working a regular job the next day. I must have created about 40 or 50 canvases in all, most of which have been lost over the years. 

A few oil canvases from back in the day.

It all came to a screaming halt when I changed jobs and didn’t have time to paint anymore. Still, the desire to make pictures stayed with me and I found new ways in later years to express that urge through filmmaking and photography.

So when I came across the aforementioned tutorial on YouTube, it ignited something inside me. Technology had advanced in leaps and bounds since I put down my brushes. It was now possible to create artwork on an iPad without the associated mess of a physical medium. I followed along with the tutorial using an app called Procreate and the result signaled the beginning of a brand new journey. Over the next year, I honed my skills while drawing and painting on my iPad most every day.

Meanwhile back in the real world, my wife Linda and I decided we needed a challenge, a contrast to our usual traveling life. A hike seemed like a good idea. How about a nearly 1000 km hike from Aosta in northern Italy to Rome? We had walked the Camino de Santiago in 2019 from Saint Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. That was 800 km so it wasn’t too far fetched of an idea. Spain had been a wonderful experience and we were really excited about walking the via Francigena in Italy.

I was immersed in art by now and wanted to capture some of our upcoming adventure not only in photographs but also in painting and drawing. To keep the weight of my backpack down, it didn’t make sense to bring my iPad or art supplies so I decided to try painting on my little iPhone screen. I would use an app called ArtRage Vitae for color pictures and Zen Brush 3 for monochrome ones. It sounded like a worthwhile challenge.

The beautiful thing about hiking, particularly with this kind of distance and time commitment, is that you get to see everything at a walking pace. I’m so used to the world whizzing by when I’m in a vehicle.

Like the Camino in Spain, the via Francigena does not disappoint in its epic beauty. While walking I didn’t have time to draw or paint but I did find myself absorbing my surroundings with a view to creating something later. I began to see potential paintings in abundance and locked the feeling up in my mind. I took reference photos to help me remember specifics.

At the end of a typical day of walking, there was still much to do. Laundry, a meal to be prepared, shopping for the next day’s lunch, a shower, repacking and then journaling. I wondered how I would find time to paint but somehow I did.

With sheer will and persistence, a small body of work emerged documenting some of the places we visited. For me, these paintings not only depict the geographical location (which is of little relevance), but more importantly, they capture the feeling of being on the trail itself.

Painting these scenes is a much deeper experience than using a camera. A photograph takes a fraction of a second while a painting can take hours and during that time, everything about the scene is recalled; the sounds, the sights, the physical sensation of my body, the pain, the pleasure, the mood and atmosphere, the entire story. It is all distilled into the final image.

Despite the inconvenient affliction of Plantar Fasciitis, which I had to bear for most of our trip, the experience of the via Francigena was a wonderful thing in my life.

Journaling was a great way of remembering our day to day life on the trail. Photographing was an effective method of capturing fleeting moments and big vistas. Painting was a way of encapsulating the very soul of the journey and I’m all the richer for making the effort.

Here is the set I created. The figure in each one is Linda. I didn’t paint her features because I wanted her to represent a simple, universal pilgrim.

This is a town called Bollengo on the way to Cavaglià. What drew me to this scene was the colors of the buildings, of course, but also the mysterious silhouette in the distance was intriguing.

On the way to Fiorenzoula, I saw these two majestic trees. Their grandeur was only amplified when Linda walked in between them giving the scene a great sense of scale.

I really loved the light in this town called Carema, just days into our adventure. It was early in the morning and there was no one about. One of the great things about painting is that you can choose what to include and what to exclude in a scene. Luckily there were no cars or people but I could have chosen to leave them out anyway.

A typical scene along the trail. The via Francigena tends to lead past every church imaginable. Uncannily, the bells would ring each time we approached a church. Was that coincidence?

If we were not passing a church there would always be one off in the distance, like a beacon. This particular morning was blanketed in fog which, like snow, can quieten the usual surrounding cacophony. It brought a wonderful sense of peace.

I adored Tuscany with its rolling hills and patterned fields. Cyprus trees are also abundant in this area. Van Gogh painted a lot of trees like this and I felt his spirit along this part of the trail.

Sometimes the road feels never-ending but something will be on or just over the horizon to replenish dwindling energy. In this painting, you can see the fortified town of Monteriggioni off in the distance.

It was a brisk morning as we left Massarosa. The steam rising from rooftops, the distant giant tree and the long shadows made for great subject matter to paint.

After walking many hundreds of kilometers, we jokingly asked ourselves if there was actually a single town on the via Francigena that was not built on a steep hill. The road up to Campagnano di Roma was one of the steepest we encountered. Still, the view of the town from below was stunning. I tried to simplify the foliage, sky and the town itself into an expressive style with an economy of brushstrokes.

The final destination: Rome. In reality, of course, there were hundreds of people milling about but when you are a pilgrim arriving for the first time, you tend to filter all that noise out. Instead, your eyes are on the prize, so to speak, and in this case it was the Vatican. For this painting, I wanted to suggest the singular vision and significance of the pilgrim’s arrival.