“I had to leave to come back again” or… “home is where the art is”!

Life at an artist residency end of Week 2 

I am certain this is not an original title, but it suits me for the moment. And this moment is a realisation that, where I have been the tourist for the larger part of the past 2 years that the chance to stop for a moment is providing a flood of connections and helping me to focus on my painting with a renewed energy and insight. After taking in the south of Europe stretching from Spain to Croatia for the past two months, I now find myself in the south of Italy, and the small town of Martignano at MIRA (Martignano International Residency for Artists) for another two months. I have had 2 years without a real “home base” and exposed to the various cultures, languages, history, and places - collecting these moments in photographs.  And of course I have had sporadic moments of painting, but the results have been disjointed because of this. It has been too easy for me to be bombarded and seduced by so many potential subjects – I am now faced with where to start. Do I pick up where I left off or challenge myself with something new? So the actual (painting) journey begins… and what I am faced with are three major considerations: myself, being here, and my work – and the order of their surfacing for attention changes from day to day. I had decided a few months back to take up the challenge of a new subject – well not entirely new for me – but the idea of bringing the beautiful roman glass museum pieces I had seen since Barcelona back to “life” appealed to me, and it seemed fitting as a place to start being here on Italian soil! I had collected hundreds of photos from the museums along the way of exquisitely ancient, crude, and fragile glass objects – once functional, uncovered from their burial places, and now preserved further, behind museum glass. A miniature world of history, texture, colour, time, culture, wrapped up in a miraculously tentative combination of sand (earth), fire, water and air! How did such a fragile material survive two millenniums under the pressure of being buried metres underground?  What a potentially ‘juicy’ subject! I was seduced by the potential I saw to try and capture all of these recent experiences and visual qualities – and I had collected so much to work with - and so I began…  I had to stop being the tourist and plant myself firmly in my work. This is not an easy thing to do – the only familiar things to hold on to are me, and my history. Everything else is different and new and always attracting my attention. I need to ‘break through’ all the newness of this place and get back to me - and the first 2 weeks at MIRA have given me this necessary journey. I have poured out eight paintings - exploring texture, colour, and trying to capture time and history and still try to be true to me – and the contant struggle with “is it working?”. At this point in time I feel like I am torn between returning to the familiar or journeying forth. As as dear friend reminds me,  I hear the words, “listen to your heart”…