In 1975-76 I returned to Rome and the rest of Europe on a fellowship for student projects and travel sponsored by the Watson Foundation funded by IBM. In the spring of 1976 all the fellowship holders in Europe were invited to a convention in Salzburg, Austria where we would show off our progress in our projects. My project was a young adult/magic realism novel about a rebellious Roman aristocratic girl (I have written about this on the By-Product recently). We fellowship holders were treated like aristocrats ourselves, dining and wandering through a lordly palace.
At one point I had some extra time and used my portable watercolor set to depict a mountain in the Schloss environment, reflecting on a picturesque lake. This scene may also have been in the film of "The Sound of Music." I was lucky to see the mountain because most of the time it was clouded over. My presentation wasn't this, it was a reading from some of my text in progress.
Unfortunately, I caught the flu at that convention (as one often does) and was helped to a student refuge in Vienna where I lay helpless for days. By the time I had recovered enough to travel, it was time to leave Vienna for a scheduled meeting with friends in Denmark. I don't remember much about that week.
Picturesque mountain is watercolor on Canson paper, 11" x 9", spring 1976. Heavily re-worked in Photoshop to make a level horizon.
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