QG Focus Soula Mantalvanos Passaggi: A Painted Season

DATES
Exhibition dates: Aug 7 – Sep 7, 2025
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Passaggi: A Painted Season traces a personal journey through Central and Northern Italian towns and laneways—places rich with stone, shadow, light, and daily life. Sketched in situ and completed in my Queenscliff studio, these oil paintings on linen reflect the quiet act of walking, observing, and returning.

Italy continues to draw me in for its layered history, lived-in beauty, architecture, food, and deep cultural sense of design and art. What compels me most is how it invites slow, mindful navigation on foot, allowing a deep connection to place. These works honour that rhythm: traditional in method, intimate in scale, and grounded in presence.

While most works were captured directly from life, two paintings hold a more symbolic and emotional charge. Inspired by my memories of seeing The Barber of Seville in Verona and another architectural moment in that same city, these works place doll-like figures and references to icons—my usual stand-ins for self, memory, and the sensory imprint of experience. They serve as quiet vignettes of inner life amidst the physical journey.

Each painting captures not only what I saw but also what lingered—light falling on stone, the echo of footsteps, a remembered melody, and the simple pleasure of being there.