SANTA DOMENICA TALAO
Canvas 80×60 cm, linen, oil, 2025
Santa Domenica Talao
March 2025. I arrived in Scalea (a town in the province of Cosenza, Calabria, Italy) to embrace a different life. Behind me is the familiar rhythm of the streets, ahead lies a new country, a different language, excitement, and much that is new and unfamiliar to me.
And here I am in his house. In our house. The air smells of the sea and sunshine. And while my heart quiets down, getting used to the new walls, my eyes find a point of focus. A painting.
It has hung in the living room from the very beginning, painted by a friend of my Italian partner. In 1985. He has left, leaving behind this quiet, piercing gaze at the world. The canvas is titled “Santa Domenica Talao.” And from the very first moment, it caught me like a hook deep inside. Not just an image, but a silent call.
I am an artist. I am used to not just looking but seeing. Here, I felt a necessity. Not just to copy but to filter it through myself, to make it part of my story. As if this Italian artist, looking at me from 1985, left some kind of guidance. A message for the future that I must decipher and transfer onto a new canvas.
And I began to gaze deeply.
Here it is, the heart of Santa Domenica. An old church, stern and majestic. Its clock and bells reach up into the sky, as if they touch eternity. I have not yet seen it in person, but I can already hear it. I was told that the bells mark time every fifteen minutes here. Their ringing, pure sounds spread far away into the mountains, into the heights, into the very heart of the valley. They are the pulse of this place, its breath.
And the sky… It divides into two parts—blue and white. So childishly pure and straightforward. And these colors seem to touch the mountain on the horizon, caressing it, merging with it in a single impulse. Underfoot is cobblestone laid out in a pattern. Ancient stones that hold the steps of thousands of people. This adds even more nobility, a feeling that everything here is in its rightful place.
A partially preserved old house where restaurant patrons now chatter. And behind it—a viewpoint from which, I know, opens that very view that captivated the Italian artist. A stone bench made from the same stone as the church itself. It is motionless, like time frozen in the past.
Forty years have flown by since his brush captured this moment. Only the trees have grown taller and wider; their crowns now provide more shade. And the stone steps leading up to the church are still the same. They invite you to ascend. To take a step. To enter. And I fell in love with this place at first sight. It is a place of power, a refuge for the soul—my soul.
And now I am painting my “Santa Domenica Talao.” I am entering into a dialogue with an artist I have never seen. I thank him for this gift, for this starting point in my new life. My painting is not a copy. It is my response. My “I am here; I have received your message.”
I look at the canvas and then out the window at the shining Italian street. This painting being born under my brush will become my talisman. A blessing from myself—from the present to the future. To remember that every place has a soul, and every soul has its own eternal, timeless landscape waiting for its artist.