A New Watercolor: Puglia

This new watercolor is entitled "Laundry Day, Alberobello, Puglia" - this is the region where the trulli are found. These are the little houses with circular pointed stone roofs unique to this area. Click here for Bob's photograph that inspired my painting.

Here is an excerpt from our Italy Blog of what I wrote about this very special, little visited (by Americans) region of Italy:

Trulli! Alberobello and Locorotondo - February 19, 2007

On Wednesday, we got up and out early (in spite of a bit of a hangover from drinking an entire bottle of wine!) and headed for Alberobello, by way of Locorotondo. We were thrilled to see a brilliant blue sky overhead and couldn't wait to get started. It is impossible to describe the feeling of driving through this area and seeing these little houses in clusters everywhere. For one thing, they seem so simple and lovely, sometimes a single one standing along, usually in clusters of 3 or more. Some are dark stones, other more tan, golden. Some have white tops with decorations on them, some are plain. They say that it is just easier to build another one when you need more room, so some of the larger farms seem like an entire little borgo, with at least 10 or 12 of varying heights, clustered around a more box-like house. White is the color of these homes, unless they are made entirely of the warm, pink/tan stones of the area. Low stone walls surround the farms, reminding us of Ragusa and there are olive groves and vineyards and broad stretches of rolling farmland, a bright chartreuse green now.

But nothing is like arriving in Alberobello and seeing an entire little city, two huge neighborhoods on either side of a main drag, built completely of these trulli. The people themselves seem built to fit in them as so many of them were small of stature as well and we wondered which came first! They were for the most part friendly and proud of their little homes but we can only imagine how it must be in the summer when their world is invaded by hordes of tourists. It really is like stepping into a fairytale and you fully expect to see Snow White appear, because surely, Sneezy, Grumpy and Happy must be nearby. We loved it. We took copious amounts of photos. I sketched.