Tanaro II is the second painting of Anno Tanaro. It is the July painting.
Anno Tanaro is a year I am spending with one point of the Tanaro, the river close to my studio in the Val Tanaro. Once a month, from June 2026 to May 2027, we go to the exact same spot and photograph it from the same position, as near the first of the month as the weather allows, and I paint it from that reference: twelve visits, twelve paintings, one place. I use the same 60×80 canvas every time, so that nothing changes except the year itself, the water as it rises and falls, the stones when the river uncovers them, the trees, the snow when it finally comes.
This is the same place a month on, in full summer. The day was clear and the mountains stood sharp in the distance. On the banks everything has grown and filled in, the trees and the bushes thick with green. Weeks of heat have dropped the river: the water runs lower, between the stones now instead of over them, and it has uncovered rocks I had never seen, some of them huge. There is more green in it than in June, where before there was more blue.
I paint it with my fingers, in oil, straight onto the cotton canvas, no brushes, so there is nothing between my hand and the place, and the surface keeps the pressure of each fingertip. The place stays still, and the year moves through it. Tanaro II is the first sign of it moving.
