Tanaro

This is the painting that started everything.

I painted this point of the Tanaro one day near my studio in the Val Tanaro, with my fingers, in oil, on a 95×95 cotton canvas. It is the largest finger painting I have made. When it was finished I could not let the place go, and a few months later I went back and stood in exactly the same spot to begin Anno Tanaro: a year of returning to that one point of the river, once a month, twelve paintings between June 2026 and May 2027, to watch the same place change through the seasons.

So this canvas is the origin of the project, not one of the twelve. It is where I first looked hard enough at this stretch of water to want to give it a whole year. Everything in Anno Tanaro, the fixed spot, the bare hands, the patience, started here.