How Janice Painted Her Way to Italy

A few years ago, my friend Janice McLean paid for her trip to Italy with watercolours.

She packed her brushes, paints, and a toothbrush in a tiny carry-on bag, and as she travelled, she created small, postcard-sized watercolours along the way and mailed them home to the people who had sponsored her.

And I was one of them.

Italy had already become part of Janice’s life. Years into a career that began in stained glass and painting, she went to Europe to study fresco and egg tempera at the Accademia d’Arte in Florence, working the way Leonardo, Michelangelo and Botticelli once had. She came home with a new depth in her work, and a style all her own: texture and atmosphere built up slowly, layer by layer, with drawing, acrylic mediums, and touches of silver, gold or copper leaf over a marble dust-plastered canvas. Italy never really left it, either. The villages, the weathered walls, the coastlines and olive groves, that particular light, all of it kept surfacing on her canvases for years afterward.

So when she dreamed of going back, not for a holiday, but to wander, sketch, sit in cafés and paint what moved her, the one thing missing was money. She was supporting herself as a full time artist. Instead of shelving the idea, she made an offer: sponsor the trip, and she’d travel through Italy, paint original watercolour postcards, and mail them home along the way. Not prints. Not photographs. Small original paintings, made in Italy, sent through the Italian post.

Every time one arrived, I felt like I was there with her. I pictured her sitting outside at Bar Pan e Vin in Corniglia, sketchbook open, camera on the table, an ice-cold limoncello beside her, warm sun on her face, watching the light and the people. Later, I imagined her walking back to her little appartamento, cooking pasta, sipping Chianti, and working on another postcard late into the night.

Even now, when I look at them, I don't just see postcards. I see a woman who took the thing she had, her talent, and turned a problem into a plan. Janice has never waited for perfect circumstances. She painted her way to Italy, one small watercolour at a time.

Not long ago, Janice showed me a mixed-media painting of an olive grove that she had finished that was breathtaking. Not just olive trees, but something ancient and rooted, full of history and light. That’s Janice’s gift. She doesn’t paint what she sees. She paints what a place feels like. As she recently told me,

"I travel to collect moments, and I paint to live them again."

These postcards are some of the most meaningful pieces of art I own. Not only for the paintings themselves, but for everything they remind me of: Janice in Italy, following the light, making a life from her art.

Janice is proof that creativity doesn’t come with an expiry date. She’s still painting, still selling her work privately and through galleries, and still dreaming about what’s next. We hear a lot about what we’re supposed to stop doing as we age.

In fact, what's next is Italy again. YES ! We’re planning a trip together next year, after she’s sold a few more paintings, because that’s still how Janice moves through the world: painting her way toward wherever she wants to go. She sends me Italian lessons from Instagram most mornings, and over coffee we joked that we might have to start calling ourselves Marianna and Giovanna.

I can’t wait until the day I finally sit across from her at the tiny six-table Bar Pan e Vin, watching the afternoon light spill over the hillside while we sip a cold glass of sweet limoncello.

I’ll raise my glass and say, “To Italy, to friendship, and to finding your own way.”

Cin cin. 🇮🇹

Resources:

Janice McLean : Janice Mclean Gallery

Janice McLean Instagram

Galleries: Stephen Lowe

Bar Pan E Vin Fieschi 123, 19018 Corniglia Italy +39 0187 812541