Italy Painting Tour of Tuscan Hill Towns

 Kathleen Jacobs can’t wait to guide you on this amazing journey. Travel with her the heart of Tuscanyduring the peak spring flowering season. If you have ever dreamed of a trip to Italy to paint the rolling hills and vineyards of the Tuscan countryside, then this is the trip for you. The middle of May is one of the best times to visit Italy, as the weather is lovely, the landscape is fresh green, and it is prior to the major tourist...

 Kathleen Jacobs can’t wait to guide you on this amazing journey. Travel with her the heart of Tuscanyduring the peak spring flowering season. If you have ever dreamed of a trip to Italy to paint the rolling hills and vineyards of the Tuscan countryside, then this is the trip for you. The middle of May is one of the best times to visit Italy, as the weather is lovely, the landscape is fresh green, and it is prior to the major tourist season.

This departure is limited to a maximum of twelve participants. While the emphasis is an artistic workshop, this is also a cultural journey, which we believe will enhance your ability to capture the essence of Tuscany in your work. Your guides will take you to locations you could not access on your own, including monasteries, churches, vineyards, and enjoy a cooking class overlooking a Tuscan valley.

One evening is included to overnight in Florence and prepare yourself for your time in Tuscany. Those wishing to add on evenings in Florence to enjoy time wandering on your own should contact Strabo Tours to secure rooms in the group hotel. The following are easy walking distance to the hotel: Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi Corridor, and the Duomo. You can also immerse yourselves in the extraordinary art in the Uffizi and Academia Museums.

In this workshop students will paint in the open air of the beautiful Tuscan landscape. Each day we will look as Corot did, to interpret the soft color-palette of Italy. The hazy landscape paintings and poetic scenes of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot helped define plein air painting today. Like Corot we will seek to see and express the dreamlike quality of the color and light of Italy while staying true to our “first impressio” to capture the quiet dignity of the natural world.

We always welcome tour companions who are not artists. There are interesting aspects of Italian life waiting to be explored in every location. The quaint Tuscan villages offer wonderful landscapes, local markets, piazzas, and small shops to be enjoyed by all who might like to sketch, write, or simply appreciate the culture of Italy. The trip’s leisurely pace will provide ample opportunity to wander through medieval hill towns, and feast on the renowned regional foods and wines.

The accommodations that have been chosen combine simple elegance with excellent location. In Florence, you will stay at a small, family-run hotel, centrally located in a quiet neighborhood. In the Tuscan countryside, you will stay at a restored country villa, surrounded on one side by panoramic views, cobblestone streets of this lovely village on the other. It provides an absolutely perfect location for country walks and day trips to Tuscan hill towns and villages. You will have a light breakfast each day, followed by painting just outside your door with Kathleen. There will also be three days you will depart for the day, enjoying the sights and sounds of the traditional Tuscan villages not far from your hotel.

What to expect on your trip: 

• Painting for nine days during the spring bloom in the vineyards and rolling hills of Tuscany.
• You’ll use Florence as a place to land and enjoy a relaxing evening to prepare for your time in the hilltop towns of Tuscany.
• If you’d like to extend your stay on your own in Florence, contact Strabo Tours for additional evenings at your group hotel located in the heart of the city.
• Informal reviews and lectures will be interspersed throughout your journey.

Kathleen Jacobs and About this Class

In this class students will start with intuitive sketches of the natural hills, trees and foliage of the Italian landscape. Students look carefully to make pencil compositional studies to settle into the view of such a special place. Working in any painting medium, students will make small intimate paintings in one sitting. Like Corot, students will look to investigate composition, using form, shape, line, and color while working in nature. Emphasis will be placed on capturing the feeling of the landscape, without over analysis. We will use the historic color paint palette of Corot to express emotion.

Kathleen Jacobs will provide individualized instruction during plein air excursions, demonstrations, discussions, and presentations that will provide the format for an intensive exciting learning experience. Working small, participants will work to create work with a spirit of place. Her teaching emphasizes looking at the landscape and to understand the formal elements of painting, shape, color, space, form while responding to the grace, order and beauty that is in front of you. There will be ample opportunity to discuss each other’s work and to discuss other international painters throughout history to enrich our experience in Italy.

For over 29 years, Kathleen Jacobs has painted and revered the natural world in her work. Her painting career changed when she found herself standing transfixed before The Arch of Constantine and the Forum, Rome (by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot). Through his choice of close tonal pigments, smoothly painted and thinly applied brushstrokes, Corot was able to create a composition that conveys beauty, impressive strength, and serenity. She recognized a balanced, orderly composition extracted from the landscape.

Like Corot, Kathleen’s work evokes her reverence for the natural landscape and has been exhibited alongside the landscape paintings of contemporary renowned artists Wolf Kahn, Richard Yarde, Lois Dodd, Stuart Shils, amongst others. Her work is collected nationally and internationally. She is a member of the Mel Carr Gallery, Essex, CT, Conservation Gallery in Truro, MA, and for 25 years at the Kendall Gallery in Wellfleet, MA. She teaches painting and drawing around the country and was the founder of the Blueway Art Alliance, a non-profit arts organization that collaborated with other arts organizations to promote emerging and established artists. She earned her BFA in Painting and Art History from the University of MA and her MFA in Visual Arts, Critical Theory and Painting from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. Kathleen is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award and was given a grant to study abroad at the La Napoule Art Foundation in France. Formerly the Director of Art Education at the Currier Museum of Art, she now teaches painting and drawing for various art educational institutions. She lives with her family and works out of her art studio at her organic blueberry farm, in central New Hampshire. More information at www.kathleendjacobs.com