Portal: Gangivecchio
Summer 2018 ushered in the makings of a pivotal life transition for me complete with simultaneous endings and beginnings. I wanted to go somewhere new to both heal and hear and gain perspective. Dear clients offered me accommodations in their cottage on the land of Gangivecchio, a remote location in the Madonie Mountains of Sicily. Gangivecchio is the location of a Roman outpost, 14th century Benedictine abbey, and family home to the Tornabene family who ran a farm, world-famous restaurant, and inn there. It already sounded like the perfect setting to me then one of my clients said, “There is absolutely nothing to do there and I know you’ll know what to do with that.”
My two week solitary retreat turned into the unexpected discovery of a spiritual portal to a place of home, one I have returned to whenever possible. Aside from making new friends and communing with nature in all forms, the potency of time and place offered me an opportunity for deep introspection framed by monk walks, mountains, stone, springs, sea, sheep, cowbells, and majestic cypress trees. Doors spoke to me everywhere I went as I drove around the country.
I painted and drew everyday. I used water from the abbey’s four sacred springs and the Mediterranean sea for my watercolor studies. I was given special permission to use segments of the abbey walls that had crumbled to the ground and grind the painted surface layer into pigment. What once would have been a rich red paint made from oxblood was now Mediterranean-sun faded salmon-pink tone. Reds and pinks are not colors I gravitate toward but they now have a special association for me and link me immediately with the wonders of my first visit to Gangivecchio.
