Launch: Linda Cardillo’s Paint the Wind
INTERVIEW BY ANNE EASTER SMITH
Linda Cardillo is an award-winning author of historical fiction and historical romance who writes about the old country and the new, the tangle and embrace of family, and finding courage in the midst of loss. Her debut novel, Dancing on Sunday Afternoons, launched Harlequin’s Everlasting Love series. Since then she has written fourteen books and her fifteenth, Paint the Wind, has just been published.
In your own words, what is Paint the Wind about?
Caught up in the crucible of intellectual, artistic, and scientific transformation that defined Vienna in 1900 as the cultural capital of Europe, Maya, the muse of a rising Expressionist painter, defies society and the art world as she reinvents herself as an artist in her own right.
Your grasp of the skills required to paint are exceptionally well represented. Are you an artist yourself?
Once upon a time I was! It is interesting you would say that, because an artist friend of mine said the exact same thing. I studied art as an undergraduate at Tufts University, which has a joint program with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I was confronted by my print-class professor one day who said I should make a degree decision: Is it going to be words or pictures, he asked? I was taken aback, but ultimately I made the other choice and majored in English. But I never let go of my joy of painting. When I lived in Germany many years ago, I took a weekend painting workshop with an elderly German woman, who inspired me and gave me the joy to paint again. Many of my books touch on art in some way, but this is the first time I have made a serious effort to make art the center of a book.
Paint the Wind seems like a follow-on to your last book, Love That Moves the Sun, which was about a woman poet in 16th century Italy. This one is about a woman painter at the turn of the last century Vienna. Is it a mission of yours to right the wrong that the names and work of women in the arts have been lost over the centuries?
Absolutely! I had never heard of the Renaissance poet Vittoria Colonna before I tripped over her while researching to write about a woman artist of that period in Italy. It became a mission of mine to bring her to light in the 21st century. And when I started researching for Paint the Wind, I had no idea how many accomplished women painters there were in this period—many in Vienna alone—who are still unknown; it astounded me how many women had disappeared. This became the focus of the book.
Maya is a fictional character, but from whom did you get your inspiration?
It came literally from meeting a woman artist in Germany, who happened to be my husband Stefan’s Tante Maya (great-aunt). She was truly the source and inspiration for this story. She was the wife of a very well-known German artist and was his muse and model, as well as entertaining clients in Berlin to develop business for him. An effervescent, vivacious and beautiful woman, she only became an artist herself after he died.
A third of the book takes place in Greece. Why did you choose to send Maya to Greece?
I love Greece. I have been there several times. Stephan’s Tante Maya was half Greek and half German, and I was fascinated by the mingling of cultures. I have been to Skiathos and so have a sense of the landscape there. I have a Greek friend here who was extraordinarily helpful to me with research about the Greek culture.
A woman’s role in both societies in that period is very much a theme in the book. Tell us about it.
The similarities between Vienna and Greece were the societal expectations for young women. Despite Vienna’s sophistication compared with Skiathos, it was still quite constraining. There wasn’t that much difference in the expectations for behavior that Maya faced in both places. The difference is one of degree—Maya arriving in Skiathos from cultured Vienna would be like Maya arriving on the moon. For instance, Maya’s Viennese aunts would have depended on fashion, balls and class to fit in to society, whereas Maya’s Greek aunts were physically and emotionally strong, dealing with life on a more visceral level. But they also lived with a level of superstition and fear of being thought a witch. All of that would have been foreign to Maya.
You have an MBA from Harvard, which helped you when you started your own company and imprint Bellastoria Press. Doesn’t the business of producing books get in the way of actually writing them? How do you divide your time?
It is very challenging to run a publishing company and also write. My business brain was in the morning, and my writing brain was in the afternoon. I felt my brain was kind of divided. I tended to write starting around 2 p.m. but when I was actually pushed at deadline, I would shut everything off. It is why I retired Bellastoria as a publisher for other authors and turned to writing just for myself. Now I have the time to, sometimes, even go away and write.
The last part of the book jumps to a new protagonist in today’s Boston art scene. What was your reasoning for taking it there?
It’s how fiction evolves. When I originally conceived of the book, one of the experiences I had had in meeting Stefan’s aunt was, while rummaging around in my mother-in-law’s attic in Bavaria for Christmas decorations, I discovered a painting facing the wall. When I turned it around it was a beautiful nude. “That’s Tante Maya, painted by her husband,” my mother-in-law said. It just triggered something in me to tell her story. I knew I wanted some scene like that in my story—Valerie [in the 21st century] discovering the painting and deciding she needed to know more about this woman. Besides, by ending Maya’s story when I did and moving to present day Boston, it may lead me to a sequel about Maya!
Have you read something recently you can highly recommend?
Paula Hawkins’ The Blue Hour. It is about art as well—the “blue hour” is the hour in the day between sunset and dark.
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