Mediterranean in May
- Miles Phillips
- Jul 24
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 28
When I travel to paint
I am not trying to make something that looks like a photo. I am trying to remember how a place made me feel.
Every town has its own colors, fragrances, infusion of light. When painted with a committed effort, that painting, years later, will be able to initiate a time warp, to be there once again.
Using a camera
A camera is useful. It records it all down, some details you might forget. But when I paint on location, It's a whole other thing.
Air cooling the skin, sounds echoing through the narrow stone streets. Dry grass, warm walls, pine trees, lavender. Sitting long enough for the light to change. Becoming part of the painting.
Southern France and its light
Southern France I remember sitting outside in the early evening, and the light was so soft and golden it made the old stone walls glow on the castle Carcassonne. There were cypress trees and twisted pines near the old cemetery on the edge of town. Nothing felt rushed. Even the buildings seemed relaxed, like they had grown out of the ground instead of being built.
Carcassonne, May 30, 2026
Puglia taught me to tell the truth simply
Puglia felt ancient and simpler.
The low stone walls bordering territory. The ground dry and cracked. Very little softness at first glance. Just sun, stone, and open space.
Puglia did not feel decorated. It felt honest. Nothing fancy, nothing hiding. That honesty changed the way I wanted to paint it.
There is a limitation of colors in Puglia. The beauty is in the contrast between heat and stone. Something pure escaped from the architecture of Altamura and Matera. Painting these scenes at these locations brought on the color.
(Matera, Altamura, Lecce, Gravina) Puglia/ Italy
Southern Hungary taught me to slow down
Southern Hungary Is somewhat near the Mediterranean but is land-locked. Here it was quieter and softer. Green fields, fruit trees, small villages with low rooftops. It didn't shout for attention like the others. You had to slow down to notice its beauty — the way the light moved across the fields in the afternoon, or how the old houses looked tired but proud, like they were holding onto stories.
Then the Acacia was in full bloom. The first time in 5 years.
To paint Southern Hungary, I would use softer greens, muted reds, warm browns, and pale sky colors. However, the bright yellow acacias were dancing in the wind. I would keep the composition open, so the eye can move slowly, the same way the light moves everywhere.
Acacia trees and horses in Kiskunmajsa, Southern Hungary.
Andalusia taught me to paint joy
Andalusia was the most colorful of them all. (Malaga, Torremolinos)
White houses sat on dry brown hills, their orange rooftops bright against the sun. Behind simple doors, little courtyards opened into another world, filled with citrus trees, palm trees, dark outlined shadows and heat. And again, another blossoming tree, a completely different one: the Jacaranda. That intense, delicious violet.
Andalusia and the land are bold. The contrast is strong. The shapes are clean. The colors have confidence.
The white against the green and purple felt almost too bright to be real, but it was — and standing there, I couldn't help but smile.
Jacaranda trees, Torremolinos, Andalusia, Spain, May 20, 2026
What I keep from each place
When I paint these places, I'm not trying to copy everything I saw. I pick out the parts that made me feel something — a color, a shape, a shadow — and I build the painting around that feeling. That's the real reason I paint on location instead of from a photo. A photo shows you what a place looked like. A painting can show you what it felt like to be there.
That's what I hope happens when someone looks at my paintings. I hope it makes them stop for a second and feel something — maybe a memory of their own, or a quiet wish to go somewhere new and slow down. If a painting can do that, even for one person, it's done its job.
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