The streets and me....

The streets and me are getting on better. As ...Sarah Adams show starts at The Maas Gallery in London I see her work here, but in buildings not rocks  .....( more writing to follow )

  

  

Bug

The way to work

Mojo

First proper day making at the studio.

I went to the fantastic art shop called Barna Art yesterday on my bike to get some canvases, obsessed with painting and how brilliant I will be at it! They have what I have wanted all along, a smooth surface so I can draw and paint at the same time, they will make up the canvases as you wait. Pablo was really helpful and sincere about surfaces as I apologized for my lack of language.

It's strange being in a city cut off from the crowd. A city that is more about the people than any other place I have been and I, like there is a smoke screen around me, can not intercept them. When I walk Molly people talk at me and I am silent, awkward and it exacerbates my insecurities and my confidence dwindles. In a way its quite, you can be with your own thoughts in a metro full of people, but at the same time you walk around the city full of life, alone.

This week it is finally sinking in that it is going to be sunny every day in Barcelona. And if I don't get something creative done I am going to start feeling like a bit of a looser. Well, it is as if I have to. To regain some of my identity, my mojo, before I sink down into self destructive pity of an aging lady with a double chin, who cant speak Spanish let alone Catalan.

We spent a bit of sunday on the beach, and yes the sky was deep blue and it was funny to be there, and I felt amazed and lucky. But the sky can be blue and the sand can be soft under your belly as you let the warm sun heat goose pricked skin from the cold still water of Mar Bella Beach, but it's meaningless without your mojo.

And the beautiful naked things around you only agitate a rising insecurity and lack of confidence that you could brush off surrounded by the pink bodies of Paignton, but here, with the beautiful people, insecurity disguised as self loathing creeps in like a bad smell so when I go to the studio tuesday I cant do anything.

I don't know what to paint nor have the courage to start, so in strange surroundings of a new studio I listen to a song that sings "I had it all" and I miss my studio, and I scrabble and wrangle and slightly panic and then I do what I know. As Graham said to me a long time ago when I was stuck 'why don't you do a standing figure?' knowing that as soon as the clay was in my hands and a form under way someone would come out, and she has.




mojo also means .... a Cuban sauce or marinade containing garlic, olive oil, and sour oranges.

Museu d’Art Contemporani

 

 

Our fourth Saturday starts with the sound of Molly's pattering feet on tiles suggesting that after last nights private view and a couple of copas we may have slept too long, Graham takes her to the park and I cut up pungent nectarines for breakfast. Graham manages a short time in the terrace sun before he retreats to the shade side to do his 'deberes' (spanish homework!) and research much needed doggy park speak.
Mid April and the sun, like North Yorkshire wind goes through you. Molly rubs her face like she does in front of the fire when its just too hot but she just cant bear to move away. I sit for a time listening to the occasional catalan conversation across valleys of balconies and the sounds from the surrounding piled high family life. This is the background to the show stealing soprano voice singing sky high, her voice reaching to heights that bring tears to your eyes for the sheer beauty and romance of it.

Still Life

And so it starts, my love all things still, but full of life. A love resurrected from a summer in France with the strong smell of small peaches, the soft white down over pink, orange, red and yellow that make up the delicacy that is a peach.

I haven’t plunged into painting; I hope I am not being lazy and just taking a pause and a think, locating myself and feeling my way around. Graham has had to get straight on with work as his customers cries of help can be heard well across the ocean, and have to be dealt with. I have a blanket over mine so the voices are muted and my head just wont let them be heard.

So, after kissing Graham goodbye at the arch and watching the reflections of the boat pond and then shouting at Molly for eating poo again while I was distracted ( I even tied her up to the most aesthetic bench, I had a moment before dreamlike been looking at, and walked off and sat on another I was so angry) It seems the taste of poo is just irresistible and worth our morning fallouts.

Molly barking at the fountains when they came on as we were looking at them

my pretend jog

With Molly chastised and sentenced to the kitchen in the dark I go off in search of water and milk. The cash point is broken so I end up at a bank near the market and dip in to a cacophony of luscious life and colour and noise and smell. Much cheered I return to Molly laden with a breakfasts of nectarines, peaches, raspberries, strawberries, melon and bananas and salads for lunch of which Molly will have none, but she is still excited to see me and we make friends again.