Mythology & Place: Artistic Inspiration in Umbria – with Robert Minervini
May 31, 2025 - June 10, 2025
Join Robert Minervini for a 10 day workshop exploring the history of Umbria through the artists’ eye.
Through observation and storytelling, you’ll develop a personal series of pictures from Umbria. Students will create drawings, paintings, and mixed-media pieces inspired by the archetypes, icons, and legends of Italian life. You’ll explore the colors and symbols in historic art and architecture that underpin the richness of Italian mythologies.
Every day, students will learn new techniques from instructor demonstrations, including how to develop and mix a color palette based on the Umbrian landscape, developing personal sketches and compositions onsite and translating these to larger pictures in studio. You’ll have time for your own studio focus, receive individual feedback, and participate in casual discussions about contemporary interpretations of Umbrian themes.
Italy is a country where modern, ancient, and in-between are visible everywhere and incorporated into the daily culture. The workshop’s excursions will allow you to explore this continuity, from ancient Roman settlements, to Medieval architecture, to Renaissance artwork, and follow them through to the present moment.
Robert says: “This workshop isn’t just about painting; it’s about experiencing Italy in a way that will enrich your art and your life.”
Mythology and Place is organized by The City Colleges of San Francisco Extension. The link above will take you to their registration page.
About Robert
My painting and public art practice examines an evolving relationship between nature and culture through the depiction of invented spatial environments. I utilize tropes from art history, science fiction, film, and quotidian life to create an uncanny form of realm.
From grand landscapes to intricate still-lives, my work addresses the impact of humanity on the landscape and questions our relationship to it. Saccharin sunsets and dense, a-natural foliage show a hyper-naturalism that mirrors the climate crisis.
I create imagery by collaging found and personal photographs in Photoshop, altering them, and then translating those compositions to the canvas through a range of techniques—stencils, hand painting, airbrushing, spray painting, and silk screen. This intervention complicates what’s natural and what’s contrived in the painting. I’m drawn to the artificially flat nature of acrylic paints and their properties, which is often in contrast to the subjects I depict.
As La Romita School caters to multiple levels of instruction and various forms of the arts, prices will vary by session, season, instructor, and offerings.