A monochrome study born in 2011, Lago di Garda quietly captured a landscape before I truly understood its soul. As Italy slowly claimed my heart — its culture, food, and language — this painting grew with me, becoming one of the most personally meaningful pieces in my collection.
Some artworks arrive before you are ready for them. Lago di Garda was painted in 2011 as a monochrome study — an exercise in tone, light, and the quiet drama of water meeting mountains. At the time, it was a technical exploration more than an emotional one, reduced to shades of grey the way a memory sometimes is before it fully forms.
Then Italy happened.
It began with the language. We had been travelling to Italy, and I wanted to go deeper than a phrasebook — so I found a fantastic teacher, and what started as practical curiosity turned into a genuine passion. Now, at an upper-intermediate level, I can feel the texture of the culture through its words, its rhythms, and its humour. The more Italian I learned, the more I fell in love with the country itself — its food, its history, the warmth of its people, the ritual of a long Sunday lunch.
And the more I fell in love with Italy, the more this painting began to mean. What had once been a study in contrast became a study in longing.
Lago di Garda — Italy’s largest lake, cradled between the Alps and the Po Valley — has a particular kind of stillness that stays with you. That stillness is what this piece holds. It doesn’t shout. It waits, the way Italy teaches you to slow down and look again.
Today, this monochrome work occupies a special place in my portfolio, not because of its complexity, but because of the story layered beneath its surface — a story that only completed itself years after the brushstrokes dried.
