Tormented water masses with distant horizons in flames. Multicoloured reflexions over living oceans. Moving images with an astounding visual impact. These are the first words that come to my mind if I try to describe Paola Nicoletti's paintings. Needless to say, I like them a lot - but judge for yourself from the three images below, or by visiting her web site. And if you do, please drop her a line!
Paola is a friend, who has recently taken her painting quite seriously. I believe these pictures give ample justification for it. Here is what Paola herself writes to describe some of her works:

The "Art&Science" project is coming to the final phase as far as the activities in Venice are concerned. About 100 15 to 17-year-old students from high schools in Venice have assisted to lessons on particle physics and the Higgs boson in the past months, and have been challenged to produce, alone or in groups of up to three, artistic compositions inspired by what they had learned. This resulted in 38 artworks, many of which are really interesting. The 17 best works will be exposed at the Palazzo del Casinò of the Lido of Venice, the site of the international EPS conference, next July 5-12, and the three best among them will receive prizes during a public event on July 8th, in presence of the CERN director general Fabiola Gianotti.

A new review of my book, "Anomaly! Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab", has appeared on the June issue of "Physics World". It is authored by Gavin Hesketh, a lecturer at University College London, and you can read it here.

In the evening of May 30 a giant fireball lit up the skies south of Venice, Italy. The object, which was traveling very slowly along a south-north trajectory, was captured by three video stations in the area, plus observed by countless bystanders and recorded in pictures. The video data allowed to precisely measure the trajectory, which made it clear that the rock was headed straight toward the Venice metropolitan area, and that it would have landed there if it had not disintegrated in flight.

This article continues the series of postings in this blog on the results of artistic work by high-school students of three schools in Venice (out of five who took part initially) that participate in a contest and exposition connected to the initiative "Art and Science across Italy", an initiative of the network CREATIONS, funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the EU.