MURCIA!

Hola! It has been a couple days since i posted. (it has felt like months).

In Murcia I am staying at the new hacienda of long-time dear friend MariaFe Vilda. Her and partner Angel are preparing to move in, and they don’t have wifi yet….I felt like a baby who just had their pacifier plucked from their mouth….you know, that wide eyed surprised expression that quickly crumples into sobbing. But Angel came to the rescue and hooked me up with a phone that I can use as a hot spot, so here we are.

She hasn’t aged at all! I suspect witchery.

MariaFe and I did pottery together at Jawbone pottery on Vashon. Worked on the Islewilde Performance Celebration together doing giant puppets and pageants, and also did a puppet show version of George Orwel’s “Anmial Farm” with a soundtrack by Darryl Redeker. I’ve known her almost 30 years.

I got back to painting yesterday! Big environment change from Northern Spain. Murcia is about an hour from the southeastern coast of Spain and is dry and hot. (mid 90s today and yesterday. In the 100s tomorrow and the next). So far, I had spent most of my time in the cities. Now I am in a rural area, alone; me, the cooing doves and occasional barking perro. Luckily MariaFe’s garden is beautiful and has ample shade for this Northwest gringo.

“El jardin de las Brujas” . Oil on paper primed with gesso and casein.

IT MUST BE SO RELAXING…

Every Painting is a struggle. People say “Ah, painting….it must be so relaxing!” It’s relaxing in the way that writing an essay is relaxing. If you are trying to do something that is good, it is not relaxing, at least not for me. It’s always a challenge involving a gaziilion decisions, each of which could be the wrong one, and which often are. If you want to go beyond a brief, notational study (my chair painting as an example) then the time commitment goes up exponentially, and the quality of product is by no means ensured. More time can = worse. It is fairly easy to make a brief study have appeal, because it is fresh and spontaneous. All well and good, but making a painting that you can live with for years requires another level of intention.

All that said, I am only giving myself a day per painting, which is almost by definition, a study. The tightwire balancing act I am trying to do is: Make a travelogue of traditionally created imagery (much like was done before the advent of photography) AND make them good enough to put in the show that I have in Nov.-Dec. at Cafe Vino-Olio on Vashon.

La Hacienda Vilda

Oh, and here is an “In Transit” drawing done at the Alicante Airport.

I didn’t have time to do the people.