I am reading "Bella Tuscany" by Frances Mayes who also wrote "Under the Tuscan Sun". She describes the Italians as being intimate with art, growing up with art every day. She writes, "Art always has been outside, something I appreciated, loved, sought, but something not exactly natural. American towns are often void of art and are often actively ugly. In schools, art is usually a luxury which falls with no thud when the budget ax swings. Art, music, poetry - natural pleasures we were born to love - are expendables, fancy extras, so very non-binary. The unnaturalness comes, too, from the hushed atmosphere of the museums, where most of us experience art. In Italy, so much art is in the churches. Artists were commissioned to paint churches, chapels, grain markets, banks, cloisters, city halls, bedrooms, cemetery memorials, and standards borne through the streets. Sculptors glorified the rich with statues and local piazze with playful and joyous fountains. The people began to breathe the art everyday. Art in Everyday Life".
We see art all around us here, in the small hill town churches, homes and gardens. The abstract patterns of the wine fields and olive tree groves are pleasing to the eye. I feel joyously content.
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