My Prado Museum experience was a perfect counterpoint to walking the Camino.

The bottom band of Painted Steps is the place for painted studies from the works of Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes and Hieronymus Bosch, El Bosco, the two artists’ work that I spent the most time with in Madrid.
This bottom band starts as a horizontal stretch of bare paper interrupted by vertical pillars and patches painted in to indicate placeholders or niches.

I’m using this space for visual footnotes or commentaries, or as a Greek chorus, or as emphasis, like drawing a line under a word.

The Bosch are all in one room: The Adoration of the Magi Triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych, The Haywain Triptych, the Table of the Seven Deadly Sins, and Extracting the Stone of Madness and others.
The triptychs are displayed on large plinths, opened, free standing and showing the backs as well as the fronts. The backs of the ‘doors ‘are painted in monochrome grisaille, somber, meaning to be closed during Lent.
And opened splendidly to reveal the inside. No reproduction of Bosch of any size or close-up-ness prepared me for the gorgeous colour, crystal clarity, and focused wealth of information in these works.

The Goyas are in a few separate places in the Museo. The Black paintings taken from the walls of the Quinta del Sordo (country house of the deaf man) in Bordeaux, stretched and hung in the Prado in the 30’s, are together.
There are the rooms of paintings Goya was commissioned to make as cartoons for tapestries.
There is gallery with the Royal portraits, with the centerpiece- The Family of Carlos IV 1800).
(near to Velasquez’ las Meninas – (The family of Felipe IV 1656)

The first one I chose to paint is the royal family of Charles? Carlos IV, a group portrait of parents, children, cousins, whose familial dysfunction had lethal consequences.
The painting is huge, the figures seem life size.
The occasion is formal but the individual portraits are intimate.
 
I spent a fair amount of time over 3 days with this painting, looking, going elsewhere, returning, taking a break at the Prado café, returning again and discussing it with my partner.

It’s amazing to see it close up and real.  The brush strokes are so loose and relaxed, and super descriptive…the chiffon layers of the dresses, the grosgrain ribbon of the ‘Order of the Golden Fleece medals (that everyone is displaying) the velvet breeches, brocade, skin over flesh……

You can see the magic happen.
The brushstroke of paint and the picture of the thing –spark in my mind - become ‘real’.  Brilliant!!
This is the power of human imagination- a species-selected trait.

Also representational painting is not something I’ve used much, being more a drafter or constructor of images.
So basically I have to work out a method, technique, process, skills...
I’m painting from a number of reproductions wildly different in size, colour, tones, levels of detail.

These reproductions are to the real-life painting as Skype is
to a real hug.

To start I made multiple sketches from the various sources on drawing paper, layering and tracing adjustments in my attempts to ‘copy’ the painting.
 
I became aware of how complex this painting is, not formally, but in terms of the human relationships.
 
It took a lot of looking and sketching to see these gestures- the way Isabella’s strong arm divides the composition, her holding her son’s hand proudly…her son - her achievement in bearing heirs, timid Carlos peaking out behind his cousin his little hand around the waist of the tyrant-to-be- Ferdinand,

I sketched “The Royal Family” in place on the right hand panel of Painted Steps. I blocked it in with pencil lines, noting that the soft paper would not lend itself to erasing, my usual MO.

I am going to add, change, shift, with paint itself, relying on the layering and opacity of gouache.

I will have to learn to paint!

And in the course of making a picture of this painting, I wandered down many interesting avenues: the Order of the Golden Fleece  (a 19th c ‘club card’), Spanish history of succession, revolution, classism, and the Spanish shoe industry, as well as family gossip.
It’s not an easy painting.
I put it aside and work on other parts.(TBC)

In the top band I intend to paint variations of the Camino shell motif and yellow arrow that guide us along the hundreds of kilometers.
I want to paint in some of the artwork I saw outside, recent public art made for the Camino, as well as historical works.I'm not exactly sure where it will go.

The basic structure is in place, all I have to do is paint it!

On the Camino no satellite GPS is needed: the shells and painted arrows point the way!
 

“Stay calm! Be brave! Wait for the signs!” *
*Thomas King “The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour”  CBC Radio1997 to 2000

For Painted Steps, I need to figure out where along the green/ sienna/ gold/ band I should paint the little pictures.
I need benchmarks, a plotting of towns, villages  along those 500k from St Jean to León.

I use the information given to us in St-Jean at the office of Les Amis de Saint-Jacques- Friends of St. James/Santiago.
 
The sheet plots the elevations of the Camino and the distances between towns and pueblos from St Jean to Santiago.

SO, several, (several!) hours later of scanning, cropping, stitching parts together with PAGES, printouts, scotch tape, re shrinking another 5%, my own spin on ‘cartographic welding’, I produce an 88 inch long elevation line map St Jean to León.

This map reads as usual left to right (west to east) so I reverse it by tracing the line of elevation onto transparent tracing paper and flipping it over.

(The flip/flop is something I’ve used a lot in printmaking where plate and imprint are left/right reversed).
I spread the painting, the 2 sheets of Somerset, on my long table, tack the tracing paper in place and redraw the line with sufficient pressure to transfer the pencil mark onto the painting.

Here it is on the painting. It’s an abstract plotting of the elevations of the actual path but it appears to be a mountain range in a landscape! Change of perspective....

Now I can locate the towns,  I can place the little pictures.

I have another idea.
The somewhat relentless band of grey is meant to be another place for this same line.
 
I transfer the the line onto the grey with white conté using the bottom of the band as the bottom of the image …then flip it and hang it upside down in a mirror image.

It’s created a rhythm.

I like the way it also makes a path in the space between the two elevation lines.
I want to make it feel like the act of the Camino,
step by step …pasito a pasito ….

The little white ticks mark the towns and pueblos. At each shift in direction of the lines I pencil a vertical, making sort of lines of ‘latitude’, segmenting the continuous space, suggesting to me -day after day- step by step- heartbeat followed by heartbeat.

Then What?

I try painting tonal intervals, trying to give a sense of the up and down my feet felt, the large and small shifts in effort and incline.
Quite beautiful, but impossible as a system.

I tried the idea of a kind of contour map to describe the changes in surface of the path.
The problem is that I was forcing a square peg into a round hole i.e. a the concept of a 3 d space, the actual foot path onto the concept of a 2d line the elevation map…

The dilemma discussed with my partner, we came up with the idea of using colour rather than tone.

Obvious to some!

For me, using etching as a fundamental medium and paradigm I’ve long been able to compartmentalize these aspects; tone, light, dark, composition design/ hue saturation etc.

Now I have to learn to use paint.

I start painting the intervals. Beautiful!
Each and every segment a different colour, contrasting more or less abruptly, smoothly warmly, shining, dull.
Like the weather, like the landscape ...new each time.

The peak is the Alto de Perdón -a nice long climb up from Logroño, (Fortunately there is an ice cream van at the top.This is not the West Coast Trail) and a very steep hike down on loose stones.

I can paint about 8 inches at a sitting. (Camino questions.."how much did you do today?")
 
Simply painting in the intervals makes a good change from the finicky tracing and computer work and/or from the intensity of painting the little representational pictures. It’s really relaxing and soothing but also absorbing to paint ‘just’ colour.
 
So, to quote from another well known journey-
Salut to another rosy-fingered dawn!

 The journal of the process of making 'Painted Steps'

I saw in Madrid, a most significant object, linking the gold in the churches, the path of the Camino and home: Juan de la Cosa’s mapamundi (map of the world), made in 1500 that includes the earliest surviving European mapping of the Americas.

on parchment  3' x 6' approx.

Having laid the ground (literally the background) of Painted Steps, I’m gathering up images of individual things about the Camino I want to put into the painting, like the little pictures of people, cities, sea monsters and gods, found on maps like this.

I make lists of the birds, plants, animals, structures, dovecotes, peloté courts, oats, peas, barley, wheat, almond trees, a dust devil, goldfish, bugs, butterflies, outcroppings, wild boar…..
 
......remembering the first day, the first place, I  came across this new creature, or thing.

I make pen sketches and gouache studies using various sources:
my souvenir photos, my partners photos, brochures picked up and carried along the Camino, and images from the web: from personal and commercial websites about The Camino, government, agricultural, scientific, and historical websites, universities, clubs, societies, and Wikipedia, in English French and bits of Spanish.

Las urracas – magpies-  on the green lawns of the Opus Dei Universidad de Navarra on the outskirts of Pamplona / Iruña - a lovely parkland walk as we head out for the Alto of Perdón.

I was thrilled to see the storks, a fairy tale bird–reminds me how European fairy tales actually are. My first sighting was a nest on a pole/tower as we approached Puente la Reina.
I wonder if those poles were built for them, or what else is their purpose? 
There, the medieval church tower held 4 or 5 of their bulky nests.
We stopped under the stone archway to hear the bells and the chanting.

Studies of Cometa Rojas, Red Kite- fabulous!  We stopped and watched them swooping over the hills around Zubiri. If I were a lamb I would be nervous.

Distant barns…all that delicious pork?  A reality check.

The unique sighting of el Jabalí -wild boar -on an alternative Camino trail- “the one less travelled” (another quote from Robert Frost) with our Camino friend Terry from Seattle.

The highway barrels straight through the narrow streets of Villafranca Montes de Oca, where we are staying overnight.  Huge semis drive 2 feet away from the door of the Supermercado, little convenience store. The hungry peregrinos/pilgrims rush across for the 5pm opening to buy supplies for supper. Accidents? The residents are hopefully used to taking precautions.

Where along the green/sienna/gold band of the painting do I place the pictures?
Well, extreme right is St Jean - the beginning, extreme left is León,- the end, so I need to lay in a map of distances.


I will do this with the chart given to us by Les amis de Saint-Jacques, the friendly and informative pilgrim helper association in St Jean-Pied-de Port -French, San Juan Pie de Puerto- Spanish,  Donbane Garazi - Basque.

Happy Trails!

Within days of returning home to Victoria, Canada, after  7 weeks in Spain walking the Camino and visiting Madrid, I started “Painted Steps”, getting down on paper my visceral response to this rich experience.

I think of this blog as the Special Features extra of a DVD, a kind of  ‘making of ‘ documentary, telling the back-story, revealing the mistakes, the pleasures and challenges of the project.

I will paint many more little pictures into the middle band, studies of the paintings of Goya and Bosch, it will include  the yellow arrows and shell motif signage seen all along the Camino, elevation map, a trail map, place names.
 
When the painting is complete, the blog will stand as a kind of legend or key to the meaning of the painting.
 
I expect this painting to be complete in 6 months, slow travel, slower painting, much longer  longer the time I spent walking the Camino....

Just as it takes longer to digest a feast than to eat it.

Gouache on SOMERSET, grey/green printmaking paper, St Cuthberts Mill, England
30”h x 88i”w (2 sheets 30 x 44)     770cm x 2200cm

This is the state of the work as it stands so far …..
At the centre of the left panel is an illustration of the Dovecote- el palomar seen near Villalcazar de Sirga

I’ll walk you through the steps of getting to this point and take you along to the end of the painting.

I needed the painting to be ‘this’ wide, spreading out my arms - a wing span. I chose two sheets of a green/grey Somerset I’ve had in my shelf since the 1980’s.(saving them for this?) I laid the paper out on my long table, mixed a bunch of paint and started.
 
Using the convention of north at the top of the page, I paint east to west, right to left, beginning in St Jean Pied-de-Port, crossing the French border and traveling across Spain towards Santiago, working against the habitual current, the 'reading' right to left. I start with the Middle Band.

The Ground Colours
In the Middle Band I paint my sense of the basic colour shift of the landscape  from St.Jean to Leon.

Starting on the right, GREEN, all the richness of Basque country in the Pyrenees’ spring…

...moving towards the middle, crossing the divide between the Somerset sheets, the incredible SIENNA earth colours of the silt and clay of Rioja....

 ...then the high green-y GOLDS of Castile y Leon in the sharp sunrays of June on ripening wheat fields and adobe.

At The Top Band
After 40 days walking the Camino, we stayed a week in Madrid in the Cuatros Caminos district.
Our room was on the top floor of the Hostal Almansa a kind of ivory tower, peaceful in the city of 6 million,
Watching the ceiling fan whirling madly, watching the sky storming- wind, thunder and lightning, trying to rain, but failing in the 39c heat. 
Intense and beautiful.

So
Above the green, sienna, and gold area, I paint a band of blues and yellows: the Madrid sky,
and above the sky, I leave a band of bare paper, conventionally a place for decorative elements.

At the bottom of the paper I make another wider band with little marks, little niches in yellow grey gold, reminders of the gilded grapevine trim on the retables /reredos / retables of the golden churches.

This band will be a place for my studies of paintings from the Prado, especially Goya, and Bosch- el Bosco.

Between the gestural bottom area and the brush stroke layers of green sienna gold, I painted a hard-edged strip of neutral grey running flatly, relentlessly, across the paper.

So now I have five distinct horizontal bands, a ground, a place, an arena, for the unfolding/plotting of this journal.

To paint all this I’ve had to move up and down the seven foot length of the piece….still walking the Camino!

Stencil and Word Portrait Printmaking Workshop
“Me, Myself, and I… and now some additional information …"
with Agnes Ananichuk

Great workshop!
July
Agnes will lead us through a series of stimulating word exercises and share her process in the creation of oil-based monoprint word stencils. She will present an overview of prints where text has been used, and demonstrate the making and printing of word stencils.

Participants will be guided in inking, rolling, and printing colourful bookmarks made from their word portraits. The workshop will inspire new ideas on using text as a visual element and help develop a vocabulary to enhance the creation of “selfies”.

For the past year at GZPS Desiree has been the Intern as well as a regular studio member and has produced an amazing body of prints.
It's great to see some of her work in a more formal setting.
The prints will be up for a bit longer if anyone wants to drop by -studio hours tues eve, and daytime thursday and friday, 250-382-2186

This small aquatint etching is one of a group of three, on the same theme. For me, it contains a universe: the fire, friends, the moon and stars, the beach and the ocean beside.
I'm so pleased to have this as the latest addition to my art collection!

Wondering around the mountain surrounded 'campus' on the day of my arrival, waiting for my hotel room to be ready.
My ID DOLL against the mountain.

Taking possession of my beautiful sky-lighted studio in Glyde Hall. There are 24 artists Residency artists meeting that first day with staff, artist facilitators, Thematic faculty. Fantastic getting to know them.

The morning of my last (BAIR) day, before my studio show, I made it down to the river,the Bow, frozen at the edges.

Efren Quiroz   Curator

Basic curatorial proposal: To invite thirty artists to make a 30 in x 30 n piece in response to "Abstract painting (1985) 587-5" by the German artist Gerhard Richter.

“The name of the exhibition is "Difference and Repetition" which is a reference to the book by Gilles Deleuze. The concept is based on Deleuze's idea of how a new series brings back an older series and transforms it into something completely new, so that repetition brings about difference. The source of this series will be a single painting "Abstract painting (1985) 587-5" by the German artist Gerhard Richter (see attached image).

I chose this painting by Richter because it was created as a result of a series of unpredictable chaotic or gestural actions that make it difficult to reproduce. But it is also a work that evokes many possibilities.

It is essential that your piece be created in response to this specific Richter painting as the whole concept of the show is of a series derived from a single source and the repetitions and variations that result from it. For that reason I want the pieces to be a specific size 30 x 30 inches though the medium is open.”

The Slide Room Gallery,

Vancouver Island School of Art (VISA),

2549 Quadra Street.

November 1 - December 2, 2013.

My final piece, "Repeat after me" contains 64 spaces, the 64 possibilities of the I Ching.
Cardboard intaglio  30" x 30" with a monoprint 'copy' of the seminal Richter piece, & polymer litho.
It seemed a good opportunity to explore some of the inherent qualities of repetition and difference inherent in the printmaking medium so I made a decision to response through in printmaking: gestural monoprint, colour separation digital lithography and knife cut intaglio.

"Dis-asemblage Blue", Dis-asemblage Red, Dis-asemblage Black", 3 lithos mimicking colour separation printing process, but drawn in an expressionistic stye.The have been printed into "Repeat after me" and also are their own editions.

'Like' as in
'the same as'

Like as in appreciating, enjoying, caring about'
The softness of the image results partly from the drypoint-ish technique and partly from the colour of ink: graphite.

The ' Me' repeated, and repeated, referrs to myself, but refers to a different me each time,  I was at a different age, so different experiences, physically etc, and also seen and experienced through different relationships, am different.
The scanner can't figure out the medium; a not unusual problem when scanning etchings and other prints.