Some collages made during this last week...

                                         "Inside Outside". 12 cm. x 17 cm.
        

                                          "Mind's Eye Landscape". 10.5 cm. x 15 cm.

                                         "Karm Abu Girg". 10.5 cm. x 15.5 cm.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

                                         "And it was all yellow". 12.5 cm. x 18 cm.

Gallery

Toledo Blues

 "Iglesia de los Jesuitas, Toledo".

  

In Toledo for the big El Greco show we were looking for a view point over the city and soon found one in the café on the top floor of the Alcázar. I sketched the view from one of the windows (above). This was probably the  location which David Bomberg had chosen when he painted here in 1929. I imagined him exploring the old Alcázar. What would it have been like then? Images in my mind of a decaying palace inhabited by gypsies from the Romantic era...

Other layers of Toledo's history felt less reassuring...

Detail from sketch book.

One afternoon we took the train to Madrid, the railway station in Toledo in itself an absolute treasure.Sitting for a while in the café reading and being entertained by the sparrows flying in and out.

Ellie reading.

Fridge Magnet Inventory

The imminent arrival of a new fridge meant preparing the old one to be taken away and in the process taking stock of the various objects attached to the outside of it. Here`s a small sample...

These are from Habitat.

From Vienna, an Egon Schiele watercolour.

A souvenir of Asturias.

And another, this time  from New York.

A friend saw this and thought of me...

Strrictly speaking not a fridge magnet, this one...

Dunes and Sea

"A person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect."

That's actually the O.E.D. definition of the word "mystic", but is there anything mystical in my work? To start with I have chosen at random some watercolours...

     "Punta Paloma."

...They all happen to show aspects of a place called Tarifa where you stand on the edge of Europe which stretches behind you as far as the Arctic and yet just over there is... Africa! The area of the "Straits of Gibraltar" in general appeals as a territory which ignores the existing frontiers...a place for the inner- self to call home? Once upon a time such a territory did exist. It wa s known as "Vandalucia" and included parts of present day North Africa and Southern Spain...
 

                                                                        "Tarifa"

So where is there of the mystic here? I think it's there in the desire to slough off a super- imposed identity, the "me" which is made up of things like names and nationalities. This vast space between the two land masses is populated by whales, dolphins and migrating birds and just to be in such a place is to be closer to the divine...

    "Looking Across"

"Reading, drawing and painting."

 The beloved "A Year In Marrakesh" by  Peter Mayne (above) provided some of the inspiration for my painting "Between Marrakesh and Tarifa", and my copy of the book also appears in the drawing shown below..

  In the chapter entitled  "Monsieur D____´s Pavilion" Mayne gives an account of a guest house or minzah situated within a walled garden. Without following closely the author´s description I felt the painting was somehow invested with its "spirit of place", while the surrounding landscape is probably more Al Andalus than Morocco...

   The author writes that on the day of his arrival in Marrakesh,

  "The road was blue with fallen jacaranda blossom, the air yellow with sunshine".

   Well that will be another painting...

Drawing Books 1.

Quite a few of my coloured pencil drawings feature a weathered paperback copy of Lawrence Durrell's "Avignon Quintet". This is not surprising as the book has often served me as a kind of parallel universe. In another drawing (left) it forms part of a totem-like structure. In this instance I liked the way that age and use/misuse had combined to form the curved edges.