Have you ever felt in the wrong place, even though you were exactly where you were supposed to be, victims of sudden discomfort of remote origin. Have you ever felt like a boat in the woods? I think it happened to lots of us, especially in the last period.

This expression comes from the Piedmontese “coma na barca ntl bosc” (more Turin version) or “pai na barca n tel bosc” (more langhetta version) and indicates precisely that feeling of be out of place, uncomfortable in everyday situations, exactly as e a boat would feel in a wood.

I dedicated some drawings to this expression, inspired by my friend Giorgio Ballarin who had found his own as a boat, but without sea around him.

In my interpretation with watercolors or acrylics the boat is in the woods in a particular way, on the branches of trees because it is made of paper and almost ready to fly away with the wind, in a gray forest to add color and to the romantic light of the moon. In all these cases there is the discomfort of feeling out of place but also the beauty of contributing to the place where the boat is.