I do not own a brush. Everything here came off the knife.
This is Rovinj on the Istrian coast, painted three weeks after I left. The bell tower is still counting, the houses are still stacked straight into the Adriatic, and someone is still up in that one window on the second floor. I paint harbours after I leave them because that is when I know which light I want back.
The single window does all the work
Ruby called the knife work in the water beautiful. I will take that. But the composition only holds because of the one lit window halfway up the frame.
Charlotte said it pulls you in. She is right. The whole harbour is going dark—deep blue sky, terracotta cooling to rust, the water turning from ochre to indigo—and that one rectangle of warm orange is the only thing still awake. It is not symbolic. It is just the last light on before the street lamps come up, and it is enough to make you wonder who is in there and why they are still up.
The knife leaves ridges the lamp catches
I work with paint straight from the tube onto the knife, no medium, no thinning, no going back over it. This piece is thick enough that a bedside lamp will throw shadows off the ridges in the water and the stacked rooftops.
Valentina noted the textured darkness around that window. That texture is not decorative—it is structural. The dark only reads as dark because the knife dragged it in one direction and left it. You can see every decision I made. That is the whole point.
The water is three colours dragged horizontally: ochre where the last sky hits it, deep blue where the shadow falls, and a warm orange reflection under the lit window. I did not blend them. The join where two colours meet is visible, and I left it that way.
This light has been the same for six hundred years
Rovinj is a fishing town on a peninsula. The bell tower is thirteenth century, the houses are stacked Venetian-style because Venice owned the coast for four hundred years, and the harbour still fills with wooden boats every morning. The light I painted here—warm orange on terracotta, cooling to deep blue over water—has been the same since those houses were built. I am just the latest watching.
For: A living room or bedroom where you want a harbour town you have been to or want to go, with texture you can see from the doorway and one warm light to anchor the composition.
Not for: A bright, minimal space, or anyone who wants a smooth, quiet surface.
Gallery-wrapped canvas, in 3 sizes — 16×12, 24×18, 32×24 in. Ships free within the continental US.
