Le Marche, Umbria & Tuscany

'This collection of work covers the last two and a half years in Italy.

For the past ten years I have spent three or four months each year drawing and

painting the landscape in central Italy. The work started in the rolling hills and

mountains of Le Marche. Both through its history and its geography this area

has kept itself quite enclosed and separate from its more glamorous neighbours

with the Appenine chain forming a dramatic boundary that separates the hilly

wild country of le Marche from the more cultivated landscape of Umbria and

Tuscany to the north and west.

I started this collection of paintings in the spring and Autumn of 2014 working

mostly within ten or twenty kilometres of my studio just west of Camerino. The

locals are extremely friendly and often pull up at the side of the road where

I’m working to chat, inspect the work and watch. I am as amazed by their

landscape, as they are by me painting it.'

Francis Hamel