Final posting from Sant Fileu de Pallerols

Final piece finished our last day in residence in Sant Fileu de Pallerols

Among the last of the Sant Feliu de Pallerols Series

Untitled as of yet.  Still in process.

The work is progressing. I hope to finish these two before ending our residency in San Feliu de Pallerols this weekend.  Have installed myself in a bodega room as a studio in the 10th Century masía farmhouse.  

Many side trips to inspire anddistract. Will be off to the south of France for a couple of days with Isabel.

in process

Two new bases started today

These two fields each have several layers of acrylic paint and semi-transparent medium with detailed forms started, marks, shapes and cells adopted like stepping stones across the water.  Forms are emerging via pareidolic gazing...no idea where they will go just yet; trusting the unseen, letting the eye connect the dots, so to speak.

I thought I would include these preliminary images for those asking about how I work.  Each is about 75 cm x 105 cm.

Ruins and Ancestral Forests

Ruïnes i boscos ancestrals (Ruins and ancestral forests)

acrylic on canvas, 50 cm x 75 cm, 2012

Though this part of Spain has few old growth forests, the hillsides are lush with growth and mature stands of "encina" oaks, not to be confused with encino live oaks of California.  Old people remember when there was almost no dead wood on the forest floor because, especially during the Spanish Civil War and likely before, every scrap of wood was burned for cooking.  Recent forest fires in this region have been rampant and dangerous. The other reflection embedded in this work is the sense that any tangle of woods here could easily conceal stonework from the Romans, the Visigoths, etc.

First layer; lacks contrast, warm tones, a more integrated composition.

Hospitality: Masía with Three Cypress Trees

Hospitalitat; Masía amb Tres Xiprers
acrylic on canvas, 75 cm x 105 cm, 2012

Another variation on the theme of an ancient stone masía farm house with cypress trees, all in the context of my current meditation on the impermanence of human constructs.

Sabina, my 84 year-old, deeply Catalan mother in law, reminds me that three cypress trees (xiprers in Catalan) means one is offered hospitality.  One means visitors are welcomed to visit.  Two means they are also welcomed to eat, three that they are invited to stay for the night.  Isabel was quick to point out that grave yards typically have many, which just goes to show you the famous quotation "fish and guests stink in three days" sentiment of Mark Twain is rather universal, here given a rather nice Catalan ironic twist, from the gentile to the ominous.   In any case, Sabina suggests the title for this painting includes the word hospitality (hospitalitat), hereby entered and recorded, without a hint other than this note about the ultimate hospitality one might be afforded.  On a sweeter note, she also noticed what appears to be many bridges and arches (true enough) signifying the nature of hospitalitat.

Have been working on some little watercolors on the side.  Here is one mounted in a beautiful leather bound journal that Rosa and Ramón gave me.

Watercolor Journal started in August 2012.
Hand bound leather cover journal of cotton archival paper.

WAKE UP, O IRON! Masía Conte y Almorgaver Desperta Ferro

Masia Almorgaver, Desperta Ferro, acrylic on canvas, 75 x 105 cm

The masía where I am living was once the home of the tyrant and feared Guillem Galceràn de Cartellà, lord of Hostoles, known as Count Awaken the Iron”, and was leader of the terrifying military group known as the Almogávares during the conquest of Sicilia (1282-1302).  The Almogávres were mercenary soldiers known for the ferocity and cruelty.  The cry desperta ferro (awaken the iron) is in reference to swords being drawn. 

Here is some information lifted from the web, offered as light reading:

Negative connotation of Almogavars

In the region of Thrace, a popular saying included: may the revenge of the Catalans fall on you. In Bulgaria, the expressions "Catalan" and "Son of Catalan" mean "wicked man, soulless, torturer". This negative connotation reached beyond the boundaries of folklore to influence poets such as Ivan M. Vazov in the poem Pirates, first published in 1915. Vazov includes the Catalans with the Turks as the greatest oppressors of the Bulgarian nation. In the region of Parnassus, the following saying is popularised: "I will flee from the Turks to fall into the hands of the Catalans".Almogavars were also known as "catalans" in Byzantine Empire territories. The presence of the company left its mark on the folklore and the popular legend of the different regions where they spent, including as far as the Balkans and Greece. Devastation caused by Almogavars troops has created a negative connotation in some locales.

Currently, in Albania the word "Catalan" means "ugly and wicked man." Likewise, "Catalan" or "Katallani" is designated in Albanian folklore as a monster with one eye, reminiscent in many ways the Cyclops Polyphemus. This cyclops is represented by a wild blacksmith who feeds on human flesh. He also has no knees, so he can not bend, and long legs like masts of a ship. He faces a young hero named Dedaliya. This tradition, in various versions, is usually called by the title of Daedalus dhe Katallani, Daedalus and Catalan.

[edit]The battle cry of the Almogavars in Catalan

Aur! Aur! Desperta ferro!

Deus aia!

...

Veyentnos sols venir, los pobles ja flamejen:

veyentnos sols passar, son bech los corbs netejen.

La guerra y lo saqueig, no hi ha mellors plahers.

Avant, almugavers! Que avisin als fossers!

La veu del somatent nos crida ja a la guerra.

Fadigues, plujes, neus, calors resistirem,

y si'ns abat la sòn, pendrèra per llit la terra,

y si'ns rendeix la fam carn crua menjarem!

Desperta ferro! Avant! Depressa com lo llamp

cayèm sobre son camp!

Almugavers, avant! Anem allí a fer carn!

Les feres tenen fam! ^[12]

Meaning: Listen! listen! Wake up, O iron! Help us God!...Just seeing us coming the villages are already ablaze. Just seeing us passing the crows are wiping their beaks. War and plunder, there are no greater pleasures. Forward Almogavars! Let them call the gravediggers! The voice of the somatent^[13] is calling us to war. Weariness, rains, snow and heat we shall endure. And if sleep overtakes us, we will use the earth as our bed. And if we get hungry, we shall eat raw meat. Wake up, O iron! Forward! Fast as the lightning let us fall over their camp! Forward Almogavars! Let us go there to make flesh, the wild beasts are hungry!

Masía and Cypress Trees

Just a start...

In Catalan culture the presence of one cypress tree in front of a house indicates visitors are welcome; two means they are invited to stay for dinner, and three to spend the night: more means they are welcomed to stay as long as they wish.

La Finestra i el Ponent (hot winds through the window)

Finestra i el Ponent (hot west winds through the window)

Collaboration with María Isabel Pinyas de Mills using the Spanish Tudor form of the window header. The piece is entitled Finestra i el Ponent, (The Ponent wind through the window) the name of a hot wind from occidente.  

The west is associated with death because in Latin occidere is to die; the sun dies in the west.  The window is, by tradition, thought to be a protection from the inside of the house against the dark forces of the hot west wind.

The Spanish Tudor upward pointed form of the window is common here and is seen on houses as well as in churches.  

(Notes from Ramón Piñas, my brother in law, the title is attributed to María Isabel Pinyas de Mills.  This state of the piece may undergo further work in the days to come).

detail

Finestras Fullidas (leafy windows)

A funestra is Catalán for window, or in the case of ancient stone structures merely an opening in a building to allow the entry of light or air.  I have enjoyed the profusion of foliage as well, and so some sort of fusion of organic abstract form and geometry is at play here. 

Finestras Fullidas (leafy windows), acrylic on canvas,75cm x 105cm

Puentes de Castellfullit de la Roca

Puentes de Castellfollit de la Roca, acrylic on canvas, 105 x 75cm

This is the current state of the piece documented yesterday.  As I quoted from Leonardo de Vinci over lunch to Isabel and Sabina, art is not finished, only abandoned.  Isabel thinks this one needs more work.  I am abandoning it for now.

What I have found interesting, and not particularly easy, is the tension between the organic flow (which in my visual semantic is dominant) and structural geometry, here the general outlines of a bridge in the process of being blown apart, deconstructed, dissolved.  As I wrote about in the post below, the significance of the dominant power of flux and change vis-a-vis human constructs, is more and more evident to me these days both culturally and interpersonally.

I have two more canvases grounded and another well into the soup, so to speak.  Must work hard this week since we have upcoming side trips.  Still, it all contributes to the integration of the art and the incidence of being here, if for no other reason than to underscore the existential constancy and tenuousness of life.  

Castellfollit de la Roca, northern Catalunya

Castellfollit de la Roca (incomplete) acrylic on canvas

Incomplete work inspired by a visit to Castellfollit de la Roca, a town and a castle related to Isabel's Catalan family in northern Catalunya, Spain.  It is an impressive place for several reasons, perched precariously, as it is, on the precipice of a deep gorge-- but also because of the very high bridges that surround it, at least two of which are steeped in Spanish history.  The name Castellfollit refers to the layered, "leaves" of basalt stone in the area.

The municipality has a website in English at: http://www.castellfollitdelaroca.org/?c=1

The castle, Castel de Canadell, was once owned by Isabel's great great grandfather from Castellfollit de la Roca.   It still exists, though we did not visit it yet this trip.  His daughter, Sabina Canadell (married to Joan Espigulé from Ribes de Freser), was Isabel's great grandmother on her mother's side and is Isabel's and her mother's namesake.  Sabina did not inherit the castle since it passed to the first born—male or female in Catalán tradition—in this case her brother.  Isabel's grandmother, Adelaida Aparici Bataller, (another of Isabel's namesakes) was married to Fransísco Espigulé Canadell.  Isabel's mother, Sabina Espigulé Aparici, was married to Ramón Piñas Gutierrez.  They had two children, Isabel and her older brother Ramón.  Isabel's full name is now María Isabel Sabina Adelaida Pinyas de Mills (though she has returned to the phonetic spelling of Piñas as Pinyas.  Though not traditional in this form, I have taken her name, as she has mine.

The clippings below show what was the principle bridge linking Castellfollit de la Roca with the outside world, destroyed by receding Spanish troops during the Spanish civil war in 1939.  The second clipping is of nearby ruins of a much earlier bridge from the Roman occupation of what is now Spain.

I am interested in the connections made through daunting human effort only to be destroyed either by intention or time.  Though more illustrative than I usually work, I hope to make this piece more subtle, at least as a ghost of the past, reflecting the meditation I have been in on the impermanence of "bridges", of human endeavors, relationships...cultures, really all human constructs...of what remains when bridges are broken, then rebuilt, of the turbulence of change and transformation, what falls, what stands, how towns and individuals are isolated, then connected again...of our collective capacity to destroy and create...  The depth of history in this part of Spain, with the many waves of cultures that have occupied this place for thousands of years, serves to accentuate such reflections.

Destroyed during the Spanish Civil war in the 1930s

Ruins of Roman bridge, Castellfullit de la Roca

La Finestra (window), acrylic on canvas, 75 cm x 105 cm, 2012

Working steadily to integrate my vision with local features.  Another one is on the boards.  These recent pieces measure about 105 cm by 80 or so.  Acrylic on canvas.  Am getting used to the Spanish "Titan" paint, having wanted to use materials from Spain.

I am interested in the structural geometry of antique windows and doors; how the stones are arranged since it informs the way I cellularize forms in my work.  This particular doorway is dated 1637.

One of many such doorways in Sant Feliu de Pallerols. 

Back to work....

Masía, acrylic on canvas, 75cm x 105cm

I am finding my way again, abstracting from architectural forms as structural armatures for the turbulent and complex energy fields that I find behind the appearances of things...a motif born of local observations of forms combined with the absorption of local color and light, transmuted through my vision...amplified and hopefully made luminous.  This first one is a bit like earlier work though I have sketches of more local forms that will make their way into more work coming...  In any case, I am working and feeling more confident, at home with my approach....my painting is best when is ephemeral, so says Isabel, a glimpse, a luminous memory of having partially seen something....the opposite of the kind of immutable stability and static presence of antique civilization. The tension between these two poles interests me greatly and I hope to do something with it in the work this month. 

Went to the market, bought fresh bread and wine (from a barrel into a portable container, vi negro...)  Had a vermut (vermouth) on ice with cold gambas with Isabel afterward...talked about the cultural differences between Spain and the U.S.  As a native Catalán who has lived in the U.S. much of her life, she remarked that while in the U.S. we embrace change, the Catalán and Spanish cultures are geared far more to stability, history, the unchanging...and that the landscape and pueblos are arranged in that way....the notion of wilderness is quite different.  Her mother, Sabina, age 84, remarking about the recent forest fires that killed several and occupied the news here for several days, that the (economically strapped) government should have cleaned the forests of downed wood before the fire....that essentially there are no forces of nature that the government should not be in control of.  The U.S. culture is, by comparison an adolescent, full of wild hope and expectation, still in touch with the uncontrollable aspects of our fate.  Yet we manage.

We watched Spanish TV last night of hand-wringing debates about what to do with the "crisis",  the economic need to streamline layers of government in the regional autonomies, to scale back on entitlements--and they despair that they won't be politically able to do so.

Sardana and Catalan Separatism

This weekend there will be a communal "sardana" dance in Sant Feliu de Pallerols where I am living.  I have heard of this particular tradition in the past but have never seen one.

Here is the poster for the Sardana and another about Catalan separatism, the local sentiment to separate Catalonia (Catalunya in Catalá, Cataluña in Castilian Spanish) from Spain.  Such feelings are made all the more intense by the meltdown of the economy and the historic productivity of Catalans vis-a-vis the rest of Spain.

Toward a motif, thoughts about tourist art making...

Incomplete large panel (about 105 cm x 230 cm) Acrylic on canvas

I hit the wall today after almost finishing a first multi-panel piece, per my earlier idea.  It may not work as planned.  I am sure it will pass, but I am today suffering a bit of ennui, a certain boredom with my own impulses. In short, I lack a motif that is adequately mine.

Moreover, I am musing about the entire notion of painting in response to locations, however exotic and beautiful.  As a month-long visitor, the best I can hope for is a sort of tourist response. I find my eye lands first on imagery that is frankly clichéd by over use and would likely end up made into a painting being pure kitsch.  I can't do it.  Even landscape painting is not entirely immune insofar as the genre is so overworked.  The art pales beneath the cliffs, the dark forests, the Roman arches, etc.  I felt this way once before in Paris after walking beside the Seine, seeing tons of historic art, the weight of history.

What to do?  Today I will reengage my work as I have been doing it for the last few years though with attention to the geometry, the bones of local forms.   Already I have sketched a number of architectural details that may serve my interests, provide structure and a sort of armature for the color and intricacy that interests me.  It may be enough.  Here are a few of my recent pieces, done before the trip to Catalunya. While a sense of landscape is, I believe, evident in highly abstract form, the play in color, the improvisation of internal structure and a certain luminosity is present and can be here too, perhaps with some of the special light I am seeing here.   

My open air studio on the grounds of a medieval tyrant

Outside the masía where I am working.
 In some areas the structure dates from the 1100s.

First session began; conversation with Don Josep (grounds keeper)

View from my open air studio.

First session amounted to a rough start on a landscape view from my outdoor studio.  Cypress trees in the fore.  Segues to a (now) rather abstract field.  Second day I added a graphic element from the local iron work.   Feels good to be starting at last....should be a product week coming up.

The distant butte above Sant Feliu is El Faro with La Salut hermitage, and the second, Col de Contrero, another hermitage, both with restaurants.  As another local commented last night, what are you going to do at a hermitage other than eat?

Speaking of which, it is great to buy wine (vi negra) by the liter in a jug...great wine and inexpensive.  Breads are also wonderful...and the manchego sheep cheese...very bohemian.  Great fresh veggies and fruit, etc.  I can get used to this!

Musing...

About to launch into the process here....but am this morning still musing about the approach a bit.  I would like the work this month to be something of a visionary chronicle, a collection of juxtaposed sub-compositions that read as a scroll of sorts....sumptuous and varied, incorporating some of the following aspects of mental, spiritual, social and visual life:

~ The natural world, likely mostly as landscapes; possibly botanical specimens, trees, etc.
~ The social world of my experience, likely to include portraits or partial portraits of Isabel, Sabina, Ruben, etc.
~ Concrete non-representational fields representing my interior life.
~ The cultural landscape, buildings, objects in their context in the environment
~ Pareidolic active imagination

Notes:

• Catalan iron work on windows
• The distant butte
• Cypress trees (reminds me so much of Van Gogh)
• The locals being "pescalunas", moon fisherman in the local myth
• Roman-era bridge

Typical Catalan window ironwork in the region.

Incomplete passage in first panel

Sketchbook pages

Am considering my options relative to a series of paintings while here in residence.  My favorite idea this morning is to do some composite multiple compositions such as I did a few years ago.  I want to represent several separate modalities (landscape, cultural references, abstraction, etc.) such as occurs to my mind in this setting.  I bought rolls of prepared canvas and plan to work on a work board with clips, offering the opportunity to compose freely and assemble the pieces later.  The advantage is that I can be a poet, in effect, combining imagery like words....in sequences that may startle, amuse or create quasi-narratives.   There is a strong school of landscape painting in the Olot area that I want to learn more about.

The week in Barcelona was quite hot and a bit hectic with family outings and such, but Isabel and I had fun and some great food.  Walked a lot, ate a lot....spent time with family a lot.   I bought paint, canvas and a portable easel and so am ready to roll.  We were staying with Isabel's cousin in the Saint Denis district of Barcelona in a high rise apartment building on the 12th floor (where we stayed last January too).  Very spacious and nice with air conditioning, a fantastic view and the Metro nearby.

The masía Aiguabella (beautiful water) Catalan) once the feudal home of a tyrant, now broken into four apartments.

We finally arrived in San Feliu de Pallarols last night by rented car.  The two hours or so from Barcelona by high speed toll road were easy and the landscape quite beautiful.   We are in the Garroxta of Catalunya in the foothills of the Pyrennes about an hour (or less) from the French border, not far from Olot.   It was almost dark when we arrived but we had a light dinner in the little town.  This morning I went for a hike to buy coffee while Isabel rested.  I am relieved to have entered the more productive time here and so am excited to get to work.  Turns out the masía (traditional stone farmhouse), where we are staying—and was recently updated into comfortable apartments—dates from 1100 AD!

(Aiguabella site with a history of the masía)

There will be several local festivals in the next few days, including a Sardana, all in the medieval town square.   There will also be a local feast on Sunday.  I am sure there will be much more happening in August since it is apparently the most touristic month.  Glad we arrived early!