{"id":1591,"date":"2021-09-02T19:43:17","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T19:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/?p=1591"},"modified":"2021-09-02T19:53:49","modified_gmt":"2021-09-02T19:53:49","slug":"news-from-florence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/02\/news-from-florence\/","title":{"rendered":"News from Florence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>After spending the last couple of days traveling and getting over jet lag, I&#8217;m now settled in an AirBnB in Florence. Today, I visited <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/theflorencestudio.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Florence Studio<\/a>. In the morning, I took a workshop through the school with <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tjbyrne.com\" target=\"_blank\">Tom Byrne<\/a>, an Irish plein air painter. Here&#8217;s my painting from the workshop which is partly my work and partly Tom&#8217;s demonstration. The Florence Studio is just around the corner from the Ponte Vecchio in the city center, and this painting depicts a view close to the school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After painting, Tom and I went back to the studio and enjoyed a glass of prosecco with Laura Thompson and Frank Rerut, the couple who run the studio. Both originally from Canada, Frank sculpts and Laura paints. The studio functions as a school and as a working studio\/showroom. It is also home to a couple of rabbits. The afternoon prosecco and rabbits are, in fact, demonstrative of the atmosphere Laura and Frank work to create at the Florence Studio. They believe that art making can be enjoyable (as opposed to a tortured process characterized by the suffering artist). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Frank&#8217;s sculpture is human-figure focused. He makes both portraits and complete figures. He is a versatile sculptor who has experience working in wood and cast mediums making everything from toys to fireplace mantles. The thing that appears to characterize his work is the thing that he and Laura describe as characterizing their studio &#8211; that sense of joy in their work, almost a light-heartedness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"750\" src=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0214.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1599\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0214.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0214-240x300.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption>My plein air painting &#8211; with lots of help from Tom Byrne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" src=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0199.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1592\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0199.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0199-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption>Sculptures by Frank Rerut<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" src=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0203.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1594\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0203.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0203-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption>One of Frank&#8217;s portrait projects in progress<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" src=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0204.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1595\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0204.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0204-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption>Frank Rerut and Laura Thompson, the married couple who run the Florence Studio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" src=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0207.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1596\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0207.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0207-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption>This is demonstration for use by students at the Florence Studio by Laura Thompson.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"485\" src=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0217.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1597\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0217.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0217-300x243.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption>Tom Byrne, landscape painting teacher at the Florence School, enjoys some after-painting prosecco.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" src=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0205.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1598\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0205.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_0205-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption>No, I am not the model for this portrait by Frank Rerut. Photo credit to Laura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After spending the last couple of days traveling and getting over jet lag, I&#8217;m now settled in an AirBnB in Florence. Today, I visited The Florence Studio. In the morning, I took a workshop through the school with Tom Byrne, an Irish plein air painter. Here&#8217;s my painting from the workshop which is partly my work and partly Tom&#8217;s demonstration.&hellip; <span class=\"read-more-span\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/02\/news-from-florence\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;News from Florence&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1591"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1603,"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions\/1603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.belfineart.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}