Florence Residency: How Villa Medici Changed Everything

I arrived in Florence in October with two suitcases and a vague intention to "be inspired." What I didn't expect was the way the city would dismantle every assumption I had about my own practice. The ochre walls, the quality of the light, the way centuries of art-making seem to saturate the very air — it was overwhelming and clarifying in equal measure.

The Light

The first thing that strikes you about Florence is the light. It is unlike the light of any other city I have visited — warmer, more golden, more directional. It has to do with the stone, I think, and the particular angle of the sun at that latitude, and the way the narrow streets channel and concentrate the illumination. Whatever the cause, the effect is extraordinary: everything in Florence looks as if it has been painted.

I spent the first two weeks simply walking and looking. I visited the Uffizi three times. I spent an entire morning in the Brancacci Chapel, studying Masaccio's frescoes. I stood in front of Botticelli's Primavera for so long that a guard came to ask if I was feeling well. I was. I was feeling better than I had in years.

Florence does not inspire you. It reminds you of what you already know but have forgotten how to see.

The Studio at Villa Medici

The residency studio was a large, high-ceilinged room on the ground floor of the villa, with north-facing windows that provided the consistent, shadowless light that painters have sought for centuries. It was sparsely furnished — a large table, several easels, a sink, shelves of materials left by previous residents. On the wall above the sink, someone had written in pencil: Ogni giorno è un nuovo inizio. Every day is a new beginning.

I worked in that studio for six weeks, and the work I made there is unlike anything I had made before. The Florentine light had gotten into me, somehow. My palette shifted — the cool greys and blues that had dominated my work gave way to warmer tones, to ochres and siennas and the particular dusty rose of the Florentine plaster. My mark-making became more deliberate, more considered. I slowed down.

The Conversations

The residency brought together twelve artists from nine countries, working in disciplines ranging from painting and sculpture to video and performance. The conversations we had — over dinner, in the courtyard, in each other's studios — were among the most stimulating of my professional life.

One conversation in particular changed the way I think about my practice. A sculptor from São Paulo named Rafael was working on a series of pieces that incorporated found objects — fragments of old buildings, pieces of discarded furniture, shards of ceramic. He spoke about the importance of allowing the material to carry its own history, of not imposing your intentions on something that already has a story.

I had been thinking about gold leaf in purely formal terms — as a material with particular optical properties that I could deploy strategically. Rafael's words made me reconsider. The gold leaf I use has a history. It was mined somewhere, refined somewhere, beaten to extraordinary thinness by craftspeople who have been doing this work for generations. When I apply it to a canvas, I am not simply adding a material. I am adding a story.

What I Brought Home

I returned from Florence with a suitcase full of materials — pigments, papers, a small collection of Byzantine icons I had found in a market near the Ponte Vecchio — and a head full of new ideas. But more than the materials and the ideas, I brought home a different relationship with time.

Florence is a city that takes the long view. The buildings have been standing for five hundred years. The paintings in the museums were made by people who understood that they were working for posterity, not for the market. That understanding — that the work you make today might outlast you by centuries — is both humbling and liberating.

It has made me more patient. More willing to wait for the right moment, the right mark, the right decision. Less anxious about productivity and more attentive to quality. Less interested in making many things and more interested in making things that matter.

I am still working through what Florence gave me. I suspect I will be for the rest of my life.