AEOLIA

AEOLIA

acrylic and fabric on board

34"x40"

I can't look away from the warmly bronzed tourists in my gallery this cold Santa Fe winter day. They've obviously come from somewhere warm, possibly hot, their golden flesh a sunny testament. Middle-aged, fit, both man and woman silver-haired, their English betrays them as Americans, and I wonder if even from Miami or San Diego, such tans could possibly be acquired in the US during this month of rampant low temperatures across our land. Curiosity prompts the question usually reserved for foreign-accented visitors to the gallery: "Where are you from?"

Montana! Certainly not the sunbelt! Amused at my blatant interest in their coloring, they say they'd spent the past two months in the Mediterranean, flew from there to visit a son living in California, are now motoring back to harsher climes. Any mention of the Mediterranean pushes all my buttons, and conversation flows.

Where exactly in the Mediterranean?

"Lipari."

I direct their attention to my painting Aeolia, completed after a storm-tossed, overnight ferry crossing from Messina to Naples, and my first glimpse of the Aeolian Islands.

I'd been in Messina with my family to accompany an Italian business partner from Milano who was restoring mosaics in the ancient Sicilian cathedral. We'd spent the summer traveling through Italy in a Volkswagen bus, which had to be lashed topside on the bow of the ferry for the trip back to the mainland. Within minutes out of Messina's harbor, a fierce storm had the crew forcing all passengers to remain below decks, one of the sailors warning me that the huge waves crashing over the bow could mean the loss of our bus overboard. The boat and we passengers were so severely buffeted and in such critical danger (we learned next morning that another ferry had been sunk during the storm) that I couldn't have cared less about the loss of a vehicle in those hours, was concerned only about keeping curious children -- anxious to witness the havoc above -- in our stateroom.

The night was long, the majority of the passengers sick, the corridors and rooms below deck increasingly foul. Attempts to evade crew and go topside for fresh air were thwarted by inability to maintain balance, being thrown against bulkheads or knocked off one's feet, trying to crawl back to quarters. The few times we were allowed on deck were when the ferry pulled into one of the islands' harbors, was safely out from the open sea, to disembark arriving locals and take on new passengers for the mainland. At such times those of us not bedridden by nausea crowded the railings to watch not only the colorful, frantic exchange of passengers but to gaze at the incredible, if intimidating, beauty of Volcano and Stromboli, fiery lava pouring from the crater atop the latter, descending in scarlet streams down the side of the mountain, crashing into a blazing sea. I'd never seen skies the color of those before me -- not black in this dark night, but a red for which there was no palette pigment, and could possibly never be duplicated. Nevertheless, I silently vowed to try to remember and paint it.

Back at sea, again below deck in the maelstrom, we waited for the next calm of the boat's tremors to suggest we were entering another safe harbor. On deck as we approached Lipari, I was joined by our friend from Milan, who'd suffered grievously from seasickness since departure from Messina. I'd checked on him once in his stateroom, found him ghastly pale, cold-sweated, too weak to stand. He'd finally managed to quit the stale confines of below deck, seek fresh air. We looked on Lipari through a shrouding mist, its great resources of pumice and obsidian making it appear a white ghost afloat on the Tyrrhenian Sea.  My friend clung to me for support and balance, and I regretted that he'd changed his departure date from Messina because he wanted to travel with us. And I told him so. But with neither of us able to take our eyes from that mystical white vision of Lipari before us, this gifted artist beside me, too sick for stronger speech, bade me be silent, whispering "Ah no, Andrea. Guarda, e poesia."

"So you painted the red sky," the woman from Montana says about my painting, "but what are all those figures about?" I do not know, they started out as abstractions, mere line and form, then took on lives of their own. "And that white vision of Lipari you speak of," the man asked, "Never painted it?"

Yes, I tried. And considered the work a failure. But it sold quickly, before I'd photographed or documented it and to a collector whose name I don't remember. Perhaps he saw in it the thing I thought I'd not captured, the poetry which made that horrendous sea crossing so memorable to my sick Italian friend, lover of beauty.