Like last year, our first stop in Portugal was in Castro Marim, a little town right by the border with Spain. We already enjoyed that place very much last time, and I wanted to come back as I had the feeling that I had much more to sketch here. We spent 2 days in Castro Marim and I really felt the same artistic enchantment as before.
A more realistic fantascape, almost still life…
it might have been before the trees started to take human form and invade our world
at a time when ice and fire
were not parted by physical laws…
About 2 months ago , Susan Cornelis and me started the series Fantascapes. The idea came as I was painting blossoming almond trees here, in Spain, because the almond trees, sometimes, look so much like figures.
A little later, while Kevin and me were travelling to El Cabo de Gata (Spain, Provincia de Almeria) I had the idea to extend the Fantascapes to the sea, calling them Fantaseas… by the way, a wonderful wordplay on the word Fantasy, don’t you think so?…
There I looked at the sea, at the rock formations, and here is what came out… as you can see, not only the trees look like figures, if you have enough free fantasea…
You won’t believe it, but this is what I saw today, looking through exactly the same window as yesterday!
Just in another mood… still resting from fighting the bulls, but no nostalgia today, the present is pink, and the future even pinker! By the way: pink means happiness for me!
And using some strange paper and new tubes of acrylics which I bought today by accident, in fact while I was searching for telescopic feet…
Just to show you how differently I can I see nature around me… or at least, how my hand (or my brush) does!
I was tired to fight the bulls this afternoon, layed the cape down, dreamt through the window and painted what I saw… just a little landscape in South of Spain, viewed by melancholical eyes…
I am sorry, but I don’t remember where this was… could it be the village Sarrion from my last post? The tree seems to be the same, although its colour is quite different and the quantity and position of its branches is not the same. The church is similar too, although the dome is round instead of triangular… and the roofs are red instead of blue… but all lines still dancing though and this is the most important thing!
But well, I am not such a faithful soul to nature -although I love it!- and my fantasy always gets wings when I sit outside and paint. After a while I forget where I am sitting and what is around and who I am myself and I just leave my brush doing its own business. My brush knows anyway much better than me how to paint!
I spent 2 weeks painting blossoming almond trees some time ago… the result, as always with me, has nothing visibly to do with reality, but the fact is that I was there and looked at the trees and painted what I saw…
The blossoming almond trees are an unforgettable show here where I live in Spain. They already blossom in January, no need to wait until March or April to have a “spring” in one’s step. Anyway in Spain there is always something in bud… when it’s not the almond trees, then it’s the oranges trees, or the lemon trees, or the olive trees, or the electricity pylons, or even the bulls! This might be the reason why the Spaniards are hot stuff… they always have a spring in their step!
Looking at the almond trees, I noticed that most of them look like dancers! Well, some look like witches, above all when they stay in shade, but even then they look like dancing witches. One can see in the form of the trunks and the branches of these extremely expressive trees all the attitudes and gestures of classic and modern ballet dancers.
This made me wonder: have the first choreographers been inspired by trees, or is it simply a kind of natural law, that when you have something like a body and members, or trunks and branches, you simply take the same attitudes, being submitted to the same physical laws as for example, gravity?
And, last but not least, have a look at Susan Cornelis last Fantascape: it is… merveilleux!
