The train hasn’t stopped yet. It is still coming in above the harbour, and down below, Vernazza has already switched its lamps on for the evening.
Terracotta, ochre and rose houses stacked up the hill. Dark water underneath them holding every light twice. The sky is still orange at the top and going deep blue at the edges, the way it does for about twenty minutes and then doesn’t.
Find the one window
Look along the houses until you find the window that is warmer than all the others. Just lit. Somebody in there got home before you did. Marco does this in every harbour he paints — one light a shade hotter than the rest — and it is the reason your eye lands somewhere instead of wandering. Once you see it you cannot unsee it, and it is the first thing you will point out to anyone standing next to you.
Notice too that you are not at the postcard angle. You are one step down an alley, one table back, like you stopped walking to watch. The reflections are dragged on in thick knife ridges that stand up off the surface. As Ruby put it, the palette-knife work “engages from a distance and invites closer inspection.”
What happens once it’s up
Anyone who has taken that train into Vernazza at sunset will stop mid-sentence in front of it. It reads as warmth from across a room, then as texture when you get close. It is a hallway picture, a stairway picture — somewhere you pass and glance.
Getting it on the wall
Matte canvas, wrapped over a solid wood frame an inch and a quarter deep, so it arrives ready to hang straight from the box. One nail, two minutes, no framer and no surprise bill. Matte means a window opposite gives you the harbour back, not your own lamp. The image runs round the edges, so it looks finished from the side too.
Portrait. Most people take the 16×20 (40×50 cm) at $149; the 12×16 (30×40 cm) is $129 and the 18×24 (45×60 cm) is $229 if the wall is wide. It’s a high quality print of a digital artwork, made for you when you order, so nobody on your street has this one. Free shipping in the continental US.
One honest thing
This is a warm, dark painting. Orange, ochre, rose, deep blue water. If your room is all pale grey and white and you want it to stay airy, this will pull hard against that.
If it sounds like your kind of evening, take it home. If you want to sit with it, look through the rest of Marco’s harbours — or follow him, and you’ll see the next town before anyone else does.
