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.