INTERIORS
Swallows
2004
65 x 81 cm
acrylic on
canvas
Our house is
next to the church. The bell tower looms over our terrace.
There is a patio where a pair of swallows return each
spring. It is impressive how these birds, after flying
thousands of miles, know how to find this corner of the
world. It is curious how they enjoy our company, so close.
Sometimes they land on the cable of the TV aerial and we
spend a while peering at each other. With their distinctive
shape and outline, we see them swooping over our heads,
through the streets and around the squares of our towns and
villages. Their plumage is characteristic, black and white,
but on their backs they have some feathers that shine an
iridescent blue, impossible to represent. This scene
accompanies us from April to the end of August, when they
leave with some new swallows in the family.
In this scene
the contrast between light and shade, and the colors are
interesting... the enormous blue of the sky above our
heads, the peace of a warm midday. A moment to live, a
mystery, and this infinite instant...
Light
in the bedroom
2005
89 x 130 cm
acrylic on canvas
In summer, in
the bedroom in our house at siesta time, with the shutters
half closed, a shaft of light comes in and fills the room
with a magic light. This light, so ours, filters
indiscreetly through any crack. One day, this beam of light
fell on a piece of red cloth for a while, and rebounded
mysteriously, magically. The doors of the balcony, which
are light grey, were stained red. These lights seduce me.
Suddenly, it is clear that the color of things is
dramatically altered by the color of the surrounding
elements. I have realized that this phenomenon, in such an
obvious scene, is always happening around us. Everything
influences everything else: the type of light, the time of
day, the clouds in the sky, the color of the neighboring
houses, the color of the trees and the vegetation, the
color of the earth where we live... and that’s not
everything, the color we receive from things varies, even
depending on where we look at them from. The same scene or
landscape will give different hues to those people who see
it from different places, as the surfaces of things reflect
the light more in one direction than in another depending
on their texture, rougher or smoother. The color of things
is not the color we think they are, but rather the color we
perceive. Paradoxically, however, many of us see things the
color we believe them to be.
Bedroom
in Farrera
2004
116 x 89 cm
acrylic on canvas
In
the Pallars district, there is a hamlet that goes by the
name of Farrera. Like many places in the Pyrenees, people
have drifted away and abandoned the traditional lifestyle.
However, in the 80s, Farrera was repopulated with young
people from different parts of Catalonia as well as from
Ireland and Germany, gent aterrada dels dreams of the 60s
in search of little paradises far from the noise and bustle
of the big city crowds. The village recovered vitality with
the new initiatives. The most important has been the
Centre for Art and Nature that houses
artists in residence. Many painters, poets and musicians
spend days there, even long seasons, to develop their work
surrounded by extraordinary landscapes, in an environment
of tranquility and peace.
One December, I spent two weeks
in Farrera, to study and write, housed in this centre,
where I met the Algerian artist
Rachida Azrou, a painter with
an extraordinary strength, and the poet
Víctor Sunyol, a charming
vitality. My stay was in an old loft converted into guest
rooms. In winter, the mountain villages are really cold,
very cold, and a profound silence blankets everything, from
the valley bottoms to the highest peaks. But in the
morning, a bright, incredibly luminous sun revives
everything: the birds that sing, the cows leaving their
pen, the flocks of sheep grazing in the meadows, the cats
that recover from the chill of the night curling up in a
sheltered sunny spot, waiting for someone to them leave
something for breakfast... and the people, who gradually
start up their day’s work.... The sun renews the life of
the valley.
In my room, the light that came in through the
little balcony made the whole place shine: the floor, made
of old wooden planks, worn down by the years and creaking
when walked on; the walls covered by the paintings by
artists who have been through there; the ceiling with its
old woodworm-nibbled beams; the unmade bed, piled up with
blankets... and this light which floods everything.
Interior
light
2006
162 x 114 cm
acrylic on canvas
There are times
in the day when the light transforms any part of the house.
The light that enters through a window, through a door
ajar, through a glazed panel, through the patio... The
light not only bounces of the walls but also of any object
in the rooms and the colors of everything mix subtly.
In
this scene, a beam of sunlight comes through a little
window in the late afternoon. The light hits a piece of
white enamel and a yellow towel. The ceiling is painted sky
blue and on the wall there is a mirror with a dark blue
frame. For the few minutes that this conjunction lasts, all
the room is transformed and there is a changing spectacle
of light and colors.
To capture and reproduce these
subtleties is really difficult: there are areas with
clearly defined colors, but there are transitional places
where the change from one color to another is complex and
difficult to define. However, the magic of the scene
motivates me to try.