I have always had an incredible passion for western art, and since my first trip to Italy, I have had an incredible passion for ancient Roman art and architecture. Since that time, I have had the amazing opportunity to work with Dr. Eleonora Del Federico and Dr. Bernhard Blümich
in Herculaneum, Italy where we studied and had access to some of the greatest examples of Roman architecture, wall paintings and mosaics. We had the opportunity to research in the newly excavated Villa dei Papiri which few people are allowed to enter, and we were only allowed to go in two people at a time to prevent any excess change in humidity.
Standing barefoot on the remains of the tiled floors of the patio in Herculaneum, I would wonder how the columns would have stacked up around me to the intricate sculpted and painted ceilings and how luxurious the sculptured gardens would look if I had the opportunity to see them in their prime. The Getty Institute has been doing a significant amount of research in the Villa dei Papiri and has recreated the original site in their Getty Villa museum. I was thrilled at the opportunity to see the Getty's recreation of the villa and to have the opportunity to walk its halls mumbling "I touched the real one."
The halls of the museum are sheltered within a just, if not somewhat enlarged, recreation of a roman villa. The entrance leads to a handsome atrium from which a series of small rooms spider out in every direction. Within these rooms are held glass artifacts, stoneware and beautiful ornaments excavated from the Herculaneum site and other sites of the same time period. After wandering through the maze of rooms, a brightly lit doorway leads you out to a small garden in the center of which is a shallow pool flanked by at least 16 bronze statues. This garden seems like quite the main event, until you walk through to the central garden which boasts an incredibly symmetrical plan with a vast pool and fountain, beautifully sculpted bushes and a variety of fig and pomegranate trees.
It seems the Romans were just as fond of gardens as I am: every entryway leads to another garden. The eastern gallery boasts mosaic structure which serves as a fountain and water source to a small pool filled with water lilies and lotus plants, and the side of the mansion is flanked by a huge herb garden, planted with all of the plants that have been depicted on Roman wall paintings. Thyme and rosemary fill neat, rectangular plots while ripening pomegranate and fig trees contour the plots and provide an incredible shaded walk.
Each piece of statuary and carved scenery in the museum's well rounded collection is an inspiration to any painter, and my particular interest in figural compositions and relief-esque sense of space made the Getty Villa an amazing museum for me to visit. I would recommend it to anyone.
After the museum we drove over to Malibu Seafood, a great place to get fish and chips about 20 feet away from the shoreline. I was introduced to this place a year ago on my first visit to Los Angeles and couldn't wait to go back. We sat on their opened air patio in the sunshine eating fried fish and watching waves crash onto the beach.
We continued on our drive along the coast line and arrived at El Matador beach. The amazing beaches on the Malibu coast are surrounded by cliffs and provide safe heaven from the freeway that stretches along the coast. We parked and made our way to the edge of the cliff and as we followed a curving, dusty pathway down the cliff-side, we were honored by an incredible prospect of the wide open sea and the sculptured rocks it repeatedly crashes into.
El Matador beach is known for its romantic nooks and as we descended to the beach we found no more than 10 couples within eyes' breadth and settled by a private cavern by the famous Matador. We had no neighbors in site save for the albatross, who was incredibly interested in my purse and would saunter across the beach to it any time we were more than 15 feet away from our camp.
For as long as I can remember, I have had an incredible passion for the ocean and romantic caverns by the sea. This beach was perfect. A great stone structure abuts the edge of the beach, the strength of the waves has carved out caverns in the stone and years of dust and debris have given refuge to flowers and succulents that grow atop the rock structure and droop down its sides.
Walking around the rocky shoreline, we discovered a vast display of sea life, biding time until the return of the high tide, a seemingly dangerous lifestyle, but it seems they have been surviving in that manner for years. Giant orange and violet starfish clung to the undersides of rocks and hid covered by disturbed clumps of seaweed. To my amazement, a large population of anemones clustered behind every shady rock. They drooped lifelessly in the low tide, but awakened instantly as the waves ushered water between the crannies of their rocky homes.
The Pacific Ocean is incredibly cold, at least in the summer, as that is the only time I have yet visited the west coast, so most of our meanderings on the beach were in the safety of the warm sand. Only once did I venture past ankle deep in the waves, and had to recuperate for quite a while afterwards.
We walked up and down the shore and amused ourselves with photoshoots and feeling the sand shift under out feet as the waves hit our feet. We would have waited for the sun to set behind the glistening sea had we not been recalled to the present and packed our things to join our friends for dinner.
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