Racing through the Water

As I had to reopen my acrylic atelier to fulfil the wishes of some bullfight paintings clients, I decided to finish a painting I started about 2 years ago, when we came back from our first trip through Portugal. we had accidentally attended a powerboats racing World Championship In Barca de Alba, and fascinated by the speed and the movements of the water all around the boats, I had wanted to give it a go on canvas. Why exactly I did not finish the painting at that time, I don’t know but i guess it had to do with the fact that we were moving from Albir to Turre, and this was connected with loads of work and stress.

Anyway I finished it this morning, and I am happy with the result! It makes me want to start a sport series again, with much water, or much snow,  these nature elements which move a lot when human start to fight their way across them… I would love to do them in acrylic, but well, where should I go with the finished canvasses? My gallery is really full, part of the flat too, and I don;t want to get again that feeling of suffocating under my own art! I know, an awful reason not to paint, but watcha gonne do” as Tony Soprano uses to say 

And for those who love powerboats and wish to buy a print -available in many different sizes and on different supports like Fine Art paper or canvas- here you go:

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Serpa – 7 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

Here follow some of my last 2009 Portugal sketches. I arrived to the end eventually, more than happy, with a feeling of being totally saturated and never wanting to paint Portugal again, but also with the satisfying feeling of having completed a big job (more than 100 paintings) with -at least for me!- satisfying results. I generally pay a big attention not to lose the fun when I paint and rarely do something what I don’t fancy, but I also pay attention to finish my works, especially my paintings series. Anything else would leave me with that unpleasant feeling of having failed. Luckily I have quite a stubborn character, I seldom give up.

To be honest I still have some cute ink sketches form that trip, which would be worth some water colouring job, but i had lost them, just found them back. But they are for me like cold coffee, I can’t have them. They will join now the big drawer with all the other, coloured ones, I will put a label on the drawer “Portugal/Spain 2009″, and then never looked at them again I suppose!

I wonder which my next travel sketches will be. It was planned to go to the Provence in September/October, but this is finally cancelled. One big trip seems to be sure for January/February: 5 or 6 weeks visiting New Orleans, Austin, Memphis and Nashville, following the Mississippi. An old dream from Kevin and me, which could come true. And if yes, sure that there will be a lot of inspirations to me as  painter, and to Kevin as a musician.

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These art works are available directly on-line as Giclee print in many different dimensions, on paper or canvas, and also as greeting card. Just click on the widgets below to access my FAA store

And more generally you can see what else I paint by going to my gallery “Miki’s Enchanted World”

Serpa – 4 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

That little olf woman in the sketch, who is trying to open her door, is one of the rare Portuguese people who came and spoke to me while I was sketching. A lovely olf lady, who wanted to know what i was doing there, by no means understanding that I could find some charm in what i was seeing! She was above all worrying about me sitting in the sun without a hat… i gave her one of my galleries leaflets -I had nothing else, not even that sketch which I had just started!-  with all the tiny little images of my paintings, and she was over the moon, carrying into her house as if it was a treasure. it was very touching…

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All these paintings (and many others!) are available as Giclee print in different sizes and on different supports (paper, canvas) in my FAA Gallery

Serpa – 3 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

After I had spent 2 or 3 days in Serpa sketching all kind of buildings, I got quite bored, and needed to sketch something else. This is why, on the  7th of July (2009), I sat with kevin at a cafe outside, and made sketches of the people sitting there. I liked the faces I saw, and had quite a nice time doing that. As always my sketches tend to be caricatures, I just can’t help it… but I swear that I have warm and sympathetic feelings towards all these people I sketch, my intention is really not to make them look silly or ridiculous or whatever negative… I am sorry if some recognise themselves (what i doubt in fcat as I am not really searching for a good likeness) and feel offended… 

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These are some of the people I sketched that day. if you wnat to see more, go please to my Flickr account

Portugal in Acrylics

by Miki – Boat and Houses in Vila do Conde, Portugal

Acrylics on canvas, 70 x 70 cm

For the first time in my painter life, and to celebrate my new acrylics atelier, I reproduced in acrylics on canvas a sketch I had done last Summer in Portugal. I normally don’t fancy doing such works, I find “repetitions” or, to sound more sophisticated,  “interpretations in other techniques” quite boring and I really can’t overcome myself to do it.

This time I was myself quite curious to see how these funny sketches of dancing houses would look like on canvas. Also i have been asked many times for it, and in fact I los the opportubity of many sales because of my “lazyness”. Now I must admit that I  quite like the result. So much that I have even done a second one, and perhaps, if I can find the time (and above all the energy), I will do a whole series of them.

Recalculating the Route

I am participating again in a contest organised by the Infectious people. They are making skins for laptops, ipods, iphones, etc, and are regularly organising competitions open to all artists. We are invited  to submit works with special themes. 2 weeks ago I participated in

“I love blogging”

and this time to “Big Cities”.

I have just submitted 2 works, one about Paris (noblesse oblige), and one about Lisbon.

The real aim is to develop a skin for the laptops, something which “rocks” – but they also want us to make an appropriate presentation work of the laptop with the skin. This is perhaps the part I most enjoy in the story!  Well here I did enjoy imagining Vasco de Gama sitting at my skinned  laptop and recalculating his route…

The laptop skin – the work I have entered in the competition – is the following

This work is a combination of several sketches I did last summer in Lisbon. I literally fell in love with that city, I loved the bridge, the discoverers monument, the trams (no, in Lisbon the trams don’t run on water.,,) , the old people striding the streets, the black umbrellas against the sun and the flags everywhere!

I have no idea as to whether this design will be accepted as an entry in the contest, but I don’t really care:

FOR ME THIS IS LISBON AND I LOVE IT!

Portugal in the Box – #34

Wednesday 2nd July 2008

Barco de Alva

It is a little bit scary to write the date every day, every day is one day later, one day closer to the end of the trip. When I go away like that I always have the problem to come back, in fact I think I would prefer to live on the road, always… I always had a gypsy soul, always dreamed of spending my life on the roads and oceans of the world…
It is already July, only about 10 days are left now until we must go back… Kevin has a gig on the 19th in Germany, and must fly to England before, and we must go back to Turre, then to Albir… then a big working time will start, full of commitments… I am not so keen about it. Once you have tasted freedom , almost total freedom like we have on these trips, it is very hard to come back to normal life… I experienced something like that, even stronger, as I spent many weeks with my brother on a sailing boat. There, the rules of society are even weaker, time and space and life in the spacetime really take on another dimension…

Anyway, still about 10 days to go and Kevin tries to comfort me, saying that it is as much as some people have for their entire vacation! Yes, of course, but I am not the kind of person who finds comfort in the misery of the people having a worse life than me. Generally, that kind of wisdom is a passive one, it never helps solve the problems which hurt your life, it just helps you to survive them.

We have decided to stay in Barco de Alva until the end of the Powerboat competition, which will take place this weekend. We will perhaps make some day excursions around the area, but generally we will try to defend our place by the water and above all by the electric point! I guess at the weekend I will concentrate my drawing on the powerboats and the people around, it is surely a beautiful theme. But difficult. This morning, while Kevin was helping the national English team to pull their boats into the water to make some tests (they had a motor blow up at the last competiton in Lisbon 10 days ago), I tried to make some sketches. The first one was a total catastrophe. The proportions and shapes were totally wrong, and after the second sketch, which was a little bit better, I realised that I had to think in another way about the powerboats: much more in terms of  aeroplanes than of boats! This would perhaps help me to draw them better. I hope I can improve the sketches this weekend, as I really find these boats very aesthetic. Kevin had a long conversation with the oldest guy of the team, he will surely write about it in his own entry in Cafe Crem.
But somehow it is so funny again: although we really are in the middle of nowhere here, and we haven´t seen a tourist for a long time, we have managed to find a place where an international competition takes place. This kind of situation seems to have followed us all over the trip, from the very first beginning!

In the afternoon we had a nice bike ride to an old railway station, out of service now. How sad, somehow! It was a beautiful one, a big one, with a lot of railway stuff  I never saw before in my life:
„How can that be, you are the daughter of a railway engineer!”
said Kevin, as I told him I had never seen a changing turntable before. Well, I will have to ask my father how that can be!
Again we had a bike ride to Spain, across a bridge over the Rio Aguera this time, up a hill.  We still could feel in our legs the effects of the ride two days ago, in fact each turn of the pedal was a nightmare, up the hill or not!

I spent the rest of the day finishing some sketches with watercolour, and watching the whole river traffic with the Douro Cruisers. Quite fascinating… we are trying to find out how many of these boats are cruising the Douro, and until now we have spotted 5 different ones. There is first the Royal Family, on Portuguese flag, consisting of the 3 boats:
- „The Douro Queen”, the biggest and most modern and noisiest one, which has her motor always on and spoils the sensitivity of my ears
- „The Douro Prince”, the most insignificant and oldest looking one,  in fact no character at all…
- „The Douro Princess”, the most beautiful and most romantic one…
I wonder if they have a king too,…
Then we saw the „Vasco de Gama” with a French flag and registered in Strasbourg, and another one, from which I don´t remember the name… Something with Magellan I think. By the way I don´t remember where this guy came from… France?

We are still waiting for all the traffic from the powerboats competition to turn up and chase us from our wonderful powerplace by the river… until now it is only the English team here, although we saw two French vans in the late afternoon, obviously from the French team but without a boat, who parked for a while close to us and looked at us ferociously…
Who will dare to tell us to bugger off???

Portugal in the Box – #33

Tuesday 1st July 2008

Miranda do Douro – Mogadouro – Barco de Alva

„… 2 artists (painters) are living in two parallel, but intertwined spaces. They never can see each other, but everything they do is interacting at each point of their timespaces, in a way which is bad for the Art and consequently for the Universe. One of them must die. A comittee has been formed to decide which one should die, and it should be the worst painter. I have been chosen to decide who is the better artist, but I refuse to do it, because one of them is a former friend of mine, a painter-mathematician, and I could not be objective…“

I think we had to suffer both from the consequences of our exhausting bike ride yesterday, as we were both quite lethargic today, without any energy, somehow. Well, I was in especially bad form, the main reason being though, that I had a bad hay fever attack and this  usually puts me out of function.
We spent the first part of the day preparing to depart from the campsite, and headed then towards Mogadouro, a little town where I wanted to make a stop to have lunch, to look for an internet connection and to make some sketches.  We found the town after a nice drive on nice roads, but there we could not find any internet, and I was too tired to walk to the interesting parts where I could have drawn. The result being that we had only a lunch, and I even had a long siesta after that.
I had planned to spend the night in another little very ancient town not far from the river. We drove across wonderful landscapes of vineyards on stepped  hills by the river Douro. I started wondering if the wine here is as good as the famous „Ribeira de Duero“ in Spain, (Duero being the same river as the Douro, just called differently), and my brain went on asking itself what exactly makes a wine how it is, surely not only the river bank on which it grows! I would be curious to taste the wine here, unfortunately Kevin does not like wine. The best thing will be to bring some nice bottles to my parents and to let them invite me to dinner! Anyway, until now I could not find any adequate present for them, so I guess this would be a great idea.
As we finally  arrived in the town I had chosen for the night, we did not find it so appealing at the first glance and we decided to go on. I am not sure if it was the right decision, because we were both in a sort of negative, apathetic mood, still very tired, and nothing seems really good enough for us at that time. I hate it when I am like that, but in fact more than anything I hate my hay fever. I mentioned it already some days ago, but it made my life hell as I was living in Germany, from April until October, every year…

But at the end I must say that a big surprise was awaiting us, which could make us think that all that bad mood and laziness had a good reason. We arrived at this place, called Barco de Alva, which does not even exist on my map, and it turned to be like Christmas. First of all it is a wonderful place, the place where the Douro leaves the border, makes a 90 degrees turnd and heads towards Porto, where it joins the sea. The landscape looks fantastic, the little town has it charms too. But that is not all. This place seems to be an embarkation point for river cruisers, and we are parked right now in front of the „Douro Princess“, which, we suppose, brings her passengers –most of them English and American there and back to Porto (or the contrary). I love to look at boats, I can do it for hours and hours without being bored, even if they don´t move, my fantasy does the trip…
But it is still not all. As we arrived we noticed already 4 English motorhomes parked, with enormous tents mounted and attached to the motorhomes, and under each tent was a powerboat, and men working on them with a lot of tools and machines. I kind of got the feeling that there was power there, soemwhere. I really could smell it.And suddenly we saw it,  triple plugs were installed in the area everywhere.
Kevin went to one of the tents and asked what was going on. They told him that there was an international competition of powerboats next weekend, on Saturday the qualifications, on Sunday the final. The guys told Kevin that there would be about 50 boats participating, and that we perhaps could get away with staying here for the night, but then wed better leave. And yes, there was power everywhere, of course!
What a joy, really! If you have never lived on a sailing boat or a motorhome, you cannot know how exciting and freeing it is to get a possibility to be connected to mains power. This is the main reason why we sometimes spend time in campsites. But when the power is suddenly there, out of nowhere, and free, it is really like Christmas! And believe me, to plug the motorhome in there into these cute little sockets, was the same as to plug ourselves in: the energy was suddenly back, full power!
So I went sketching at once, starting with the Princess Douro, but my God, these things are so difficult to draw! I think I will try it again tomorrow… I made some other sketches, of simpler boats, and one of the village.
By the way, the behaviour of the village inhabitants was very different from what I had experienced in Portugal until now. As they saw me, they walked rapidly towards me, came very close, and walked then behind my back, stood there for a while totally silent and then went away. I found it very unpleasant, almost scary…

We spent a long part of the evening having a drink outside, on a bench, in front of the extraordinarily illuminated bridge and the Douro Princess. It was simply wonderful. We totally changed our plans, and decided to be here at the weekend for the competition, I never attended something like that, had never ever seen such powerboats before. We don´t know yet how we will manage it, but I think we will have 2 or 3 days around the area, and then come back for the competition. I doubt we will find any place to park the motorhome then, but well, we could park it anywhere and then ride here with the bikes…

By the way we have started a new American TV series, House M.D. Unfortunately without English subtitles and it is hard for me to understand. Oh, and that reminds me that I have a great anecdote to tell about House M.D., but this will be for another day…

Portugal in the Box – #32

Monday 30th June 2008

Miranda do Douro

„… I am walking along a riverbank, heading upriver from the sea. At a certain point the river flows into a circular lake. I see how the water is gradually receding from the lake and I think it is because of the tide. As the lake is totally empty I see that the bottom is made out of concrete. Lying on the ground, forming a perfect circle, with their feet pointing towards the centre of the circle, are many women, clothed in long white habits. They don´t move at all, they are dead…”

There was much more to that dream, I know it because of the way I felt, simply exhausted as I awoke. I could have tried to remember but again it would have meant a big effort of memory, and I could not do it…

A new surprise greeted us this morning in the campsite. Yesterday evening. at our dinner outside by candle light, we had praised again the peaceful atmosphere here, and how it is good for me who loves uncrowded places, to spend some days here, after all these crowded festive towns we had crossed, almost alone in this beautiful place. By the way, I forgot to tell an anecdote about Chaves, some days ago. It was a busy town too,  but at least the big parking had not been chosen as a display for the biggest firworks of the century, like some nights before. However… the first night as everything was wonderfully quiet around, we suddenly heard some cars arriving, and shortly after some young laughter, and then:
„Happy Birthday to you,
happy birthday to you…”
and yes, in English1
A glance through the curtains revealed to us the most incredible birthday party I had ever witnessed. In the middle of the parking the young people were giving their birthday presents to their friend, and they were all displayed on the bonnet of the birthday child´s parents car, so that everybody could look at them. One really wonders why on a car park… and these young people surely didn´t look as if they had nowhere else to go, on the contrary!
Anway, a big surprise this morning here: the campsite was invaded by about 40 children, from ages between 12 and 16  I would say. A summer camp! Within one hour they had pitched their tents and invaded the whole site, playing all kinds of loud games.
I have no doubts: they will surely have a great time here all together!!!

We rapidly took our bicycles and escaped. We wanted to explore the area a little bit more and drive along the river Douro. The most exhausting bike tour was awaiting us, good that we did not know it before. The Doura is surrounded by high vertical cliffs, and Miranda is situated on a hill, high above the river. Consequently the way to the river was a long, vertiginous ride down the hill. Yes, a wonderful feeling to ride down the hill at 50 kilometers an hour although I could not help thinking in my head:
„How the hell will we come  back?”
We are both not adepts of cycling up hills, we are more from the enjoying kind, downhill, no hill or only downhill, no wind, sunshine… in fact no effort at all is the best!
I was quite worried too about something else: the bikes had been submitted to incessant, strong vibrations on the bad roads, for many days, and we had never checked the screws. I had the worst scenarios in my head as I watched Kevin rolling down the hill with this incredible speed… but don´t worry, nothing really bad happened!

We arrived at the Doura banks, it was incredibly peaceful there, and beautiful. I read that recreational boats and so on were not recommended between April and the end of June, as the birds there were nesting and should not be disturbed. It reminded me two years ago, when I was canoeing in a canyon in Spain, near to Sepulveda, at the occasion of a family party. It was July and the nests up on the cliffs were full of little babies, and it was wonderful. I really think that we should get a canoe one day, and take it with us in our trips. We both enjoyed it a lot together last year in the Perigord, in France. We saw some great inflatable ones in Scotland last year… We will give it some serious thought!

At this place the Douro is the border between Portugal and Spain and  we made a point to cycle to Spain, crossing the bridge. It was such fun to cross the border on a bike and to make the impressive photos under the sign „Espana”!.
I told Kevin:
„Well, laugh now because it will be the last occasion for a long long time!

And in fact the ride back became quite a horror. More than anything I was suffering under the sun, which was extremely hot and high above our heads all the time.
We tried to find a shorter way to get up the high hill again, but we ended up pulling our bicycles through high grasses and big stones for a couple of kilometers, and having to come back the same way as it was leading nowhere. More than anything I was scared of the snakes, not so much for me as I had boots and long trousers on, but Kevin wore low trainers and shorts… how appetising must have been his pretty legs for the snakes!!! These places are exactly the kind of places where snakes live, and I really felt panic inside, but didn´t say one word until we were safe again on a concrete road, much later.

We finally arrived at the campsite, proud but of course totally exhausted. We even had problems to move the mouth muscles to eat the well deserved lunch… The kiddies from the summer camp were still there, of course, loud and moving all around like before… just for some half an hour we had peace, suddenly they were gone: they had been called for lunch.
„This is the only way you can get the kids to move so fast and all at once to a certain point: food!”
said Kevin.
You won´t believe it, but it is a new knowledge for me. I never realised that kids are after food like that. I thought a while about it, quite shocked that I reached 53 years without knowing this elementary fact. I don´t think I was like that as I was a child, in fact I remember that I often hid when it was time to eat. I was always very difficult with food, in fact I was a real nightmare for my parents … I did not like anything… except the divine „tetes de negres”, the licourice „negro heads” (I guess they are not called like that anymore ….) , which I used to  consume everyday in big quantities…

The rest of the day was spent resting, reading, painting a little bit, eating ice cream. Early in the evening I needed to move again and we had a walk, then we sat to drink a beer at the camp site bar, amongst the children and some older guys making a live gig on a keyboard. Kevin would have loved to jump into the session and make his own gig, but I guess he didn´t dare disturbing their party… But what a great time we had!

Portugal in the Box – #31

Sunday 29th June 2008

Miranda do Douro

I spent a lot of yesterday evening and of the day today trying to catch up a little bit with all the ink sketches I have done along the trip, putting some watercolour… I managed to finish some, and it is a good feeling, but of course I did some new ones in the morning as we rode to the town on the bikes, and they too demand colour…
We spent some hours outside with the bikes today, first by the medieval part of the town, then by a little river which the town has arranged in a lovely way. Bike tracks, bridges, and a great cafe by the river, where I spoke to a Portuguese man, the cafe owner, again one of the ones who spent most of his life abroad, 34 years in Paris. He loves France, but he loves his country too, and he agreed with me that the Spaniards have changed a lot, the word „arrogant“ coming up some different times.
Kevin and me are trying not to fall too much into this antipathy with the Spaniards as we live there and for me it is a basic need that I like the people from the country I live in. But it becomes more and more difficult. Today for example, I was sitting on a little wall, sketching, quite apart from the crowd of Spanish tourists who had invaded the church. Suddenly one older guy headed in my direction, shouting all the time:
!I knew it, I knew it!“
As he was closer to me, he had a very superficial, furtive glance at my sketching book and then looking at me, he repeated, again and again:
„I knew it, I knew it!“
I really disliked that man, he had a very arrogant face, and manners as if he were the King of the world. I asked him:
„What did you know?“
„I knew that you were drawing!“
What a deep knowledge, really!!!
Then he said:
„Very good, very good, you are a great artist!“
and went away again. I could swear he was not aware at all of what I was drawing, the glance he had at it was much too short.
Well, I can´t help it, I hate this behaviour. The disturbing, and the superficiality. It makes me feel sick, really. In the 4 weeks since we’ve been here, there was not one Portuguese person disturbing me when I was drawing. Sometimes I could feel that they were curious, but they always controlled their curiosity and left me alone.

By the way we were visiting the church too, and were amazed by a strange, small statue in a glass class. It featured a little man, with some green court clothes on, and some kind of melon hat, and a lot of little fancy dresses were hanging around him in the case. A very strange thing for a church, considering too the fact that the little man had a Japanese face. We were wondering what that might be and exactly at that moment the Spanish group with their guide approached the little man. I stood there a while, listening to what the Portuguese guide had to tell about the statue. The story was quite hilarious, in fact extremely naive, but told in a very serious way. The little man was a little boy, who appeared every time when the Spanish armies wanted to invade Miranda. The little boy always went to alert the small military presence who were living in this fort here, who themselves went to Porto and Lisbon to get the big Portuguese armies. In the meanwhile the little boy was standing at the entry of the town and after a while the Spanish armies decided to go away, conscious that they had no chance to invade the town with the little boy standing there!!!! As the big Portuguese armies finally arrived, the Spaniards were gone for a long time already!
The little boy has become a symbol of protection of the town and the pregnant woman pray to him to protect their new-born sons (notice, not their girls!). The town changes the clothes of the little boy according to the seasons.
And the melon hat? Well, at that time the Portuguese were following the English fashion and the little boy had a melon hat. But the first hat he had was made out of cardboard as he had no money to let a real one come from England, and this is the reason why they called the little boy:
„The cardboard Jesus“
I won´t repeat the word which Kevin said as I told him the story, but of course he could not help feeling very proud about the part concerning the English fashion!!!
Well, if I had belonged to the group I would have asked the guide:
„And why the Japanese face?“

By the way there is another thing which seems to be worth a series of photos or drawings in Portugal. Unfortunately I noticed it only some days ago: the little sugar bags they serve with the coffee are always quite beautiful and interesting. Today by the cafe at the river, I found them simply great. On a bright red background, is written:
„Make somebody feel special and dedicate him a book…“
and under that line is featured a book, always a different one of course. What an idea, isn´t it?
Really the Portuguese amaze me with their ideas. You can feel this creativity everywhere and all the time. Nerxt time when we will come to Portugal, I will certainly go to some museums and look how they paint, as I have no idea! I wonder if this creativity is reflected in their art too.

So, it is later in the evening now, about 10h PM, we will soon have our dinner outside, again, by candle light. By the way, it was funny tonight as a little wind came up. The awning outisde was making such noises that I had the feeling to be in a sailing boat… I quite loved it!