Leaves From My Sketchbooks. 43. Casa Terremoto, Umbria

This house, a short way from where we stayed on a farm near San Gemini, had been brutalized by earthquake and abandoned. It begged to be painted and I climbed on to  nearby water tank to do the work. The colours, the cracks, the shapes!

As I worked an Alfa-Romeo saloon packed with old, black-clad folks came along and stopped. They all looked hard at me with unsmiling faces. I had the feeling that the house might once have been theirs and that by drawing it I was stealing its soul. Or perhaps it was crammed with cannabis - who knows?

© DON DONOVAN.     donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
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Country Churches of NZ 38. De-consecrated Roman Catholic Church, Waihau Bay, Bay of Plenty

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

DECONSECRATED ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH,

WAIHAU BAY

A little to the west of Raukokore, near Waihau Bay, an old, de-consecrated Roman Catholic church is notorious for having been raided by the police and found to house a large cache of cannabis. News of this event appeared in the New Zealand Herald under the headline: 'Holy smoke - what a bumper haul'.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
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