Last Light of Venice

22 X 14 inches

Watercolor

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Venice is impossibly beautiful, but its beauty carries scars.

As the sun falls across the lagoon, the water turns a deep rust-red—beautiful at first glance, but almost unsettling, like blood spreading through the canals. Against it, the gondola becomes a dark silhouette and the city recedes beneath a veil of haze.

I wanted that contradiction to sit quietly inside the painting: the Venice we romanticize, and the Venice that is increasingly fragile. Pollution, heavy tourism, changing waters and a hazy atmosphere exist alongside the architecture, light and history that make the city extraordinary.

The red in the water is therefore not only a reflection of sunset. It can also be read as a wound—a suggestion that beneath the postcard beauty, something is hurting.

And yet the gondola continues across the water.

Finding stillness in motion—somewhere between beauty and warning