Archive
Our Village Featured on Andalusian TV as a Model Good-Life Pueblo
A team from Canal Sur, the Andalusian regional television channel, dropped by my studio on a tip from my neighbors to include me in a program they’re producing on the best, healthiest places to live in Andalusia (that’s Spain’s eight most southernmost provinces, including Granada). Our pueblo, Pinos Genil definitely fills the bill. It has improved physically a lot over five decades, but its people are still the salt of the earth. We have found it an ideal place to live since we arrived here in the fall of 1969. The proof of the pudding is that we never left. These are the photos Mike took while the television kids were in my studio. Isabel, the presenter, thought it would be fun to interview me while I was painting, so I painted her.
.
Thanks for following, commenting, and especially sharing.
Serious Springtime
I can’t resist posting this photograph Mike made the other day from the Gallinero’s little sun-moon and stars terrace. It’s been a wonderful springtime thus far with the mourning doves romancing high in the cypress trees and the bumble bees buzzing round the wysteria bush sucking nectar. The garden is surging and the summer terraces of the bars and restaurants are beginning to thrive. Everyone agrees. It’s a great time to be alive in Granada.
Autumn in Granada–Make Prints, Pick Your Breakfast from the Vine
…
Autumn is a wonderful time to work in Granada. The summer heat has passed, the nights are cooler, the occasional rain has refreshed the atmosphere, and the days are delicious.
…
I took the summer off this year, except for doing a bit of my own work, a few new liquid metal prints of the Alhambra and some editioning. I love the liquid metal technique for a dealing with a subject that has been done to death. The epoxy medium dries quite quickly so you have to work fast and working in gunk on a plate is necessarily loose, so the results always look fresh and original.
I’ve got another Australian artist coming to work one on one for a month–the last half of September and the first half of October–but after that I’m free to work with other artists. And my Gallinero residence is available from October 15. We’ve just painted the interior (with old-fashioned Spanish-style live whitewash, which not only gleams white but also sanitizes and imparts a squeaky-clean aroma to the place.)
The grapes on the arbor over the Gallinero terrace are ripening, so guests staying there can just reach out through the louvered doors and pick their breakfast. It’s a delightful experience, especially if you don’t have grapevines over your breakfast table at home.
Looking forward to seeing you and making some prints together!
Regime Change in the Cypresses
What’s a Gallinero? And why would you want to stay there?
Spring Again, Already?
Granada’s inspiring springtime is here again. It always takes us by surprise, first with the almond blossoms then in quick succession the Chinese quince and loquat flowers and then the songbirds returning from Africa to nest in our fruit and cypress trees.
Politics in the Cypresses
There’s been a regime change in the cypresses this year. After years of grudging coexistence between the plump wild pigeons and the predatory magpies, the former got tired of defending their eggs and their chicks from the latter and have nested somewhere else. The nests of the pigeons have been taken over by pairs of smaller, apparently more docile birds. We always think of doves as pacifists but that turns out to be a myth. They defend their nests tenaciously and are keeping the larger, more truculent magpies nicely at bay.
Other birds are appearing, as well: blackbirds, European robins, big streamlined black-and-gold orioles, friendly songful finches, wrens and the magnificent (though very plain Jane in appearance) nightingales that nest in the willows down along the river. It only takes two rival nightingale males to form a glorious all-night singing contest which is directed at The Gallinero, and in stereo.
El Gallinero Receives First Artists, Makes for Busy Springtime 2010
El Gallinero Receives Its First Artists, Makes for a Busy Springtime in 2010
It’s been a busy month and a half in my studio, working with artists from both sides of the Atlantic. All of them stayed in our new Gallinero (“Chicken House”) artists’ residence and have confirmed our highest hopes for that
studio/cabin as a place which genuinely inspires creative work.
Isabel Fallow
The first one to visit was Isabel Fallow, accompanied by her husband, Jack, a professional communicator and mediator (in the peacemaking sense of the word) who dedicated his time to reading and relaxing and sorting out the world with my husband Mike while Isabel and I worked together in the studio.
Isabel, like all the others in this post, found my studio on Internet (I’m not sure where as Mike has put me all over the place…) She’s a professional painter and printmaker from Buckinghamshire in the U.K. Her work is bold with a distinctive personal touch, and her drawings lent themselves nicely to the creation of solar-plate prints. She was delighted with the results and is already talking about coming back for more, perhaps with a few artist friends.
Beatriz Taillefer & Eduardo
Beatriz and Eduardo are, respectively, an established painter and a professional photographer from Málaga on the southern Mediterranean coast of Spain. Both were fascinated with the solar-plate techniques, and anxious to apply them to their work, each in their own way. Beatriz, who is doing a lot of portrait commissions lately, was anxious to change techniques for a while, so she spent some time working on her favorite subject, flowers, which she does beautifully.
Eduardo’s prints, based on his photographs expertly manipulated in PhotoShop, surprised me with their artful qualities. Who said you can’t make real art with a computer? Artistic creation aside, Beatriz and Eduardo discovered that the bar next door served free tapas with the drinks and became loyal regulars there evenings.
Janet Stahle-Fraser
Janet arrived in early June, along with her husband, Dave, from their cabin “in the bush” somewhere north of Toronto. In the two weeks she spent in my studio Janet touched some of the most interesting techniques: solar plate, carborundum, liquid metal, chine collé and experimental printing. She was delighted to go home with a big bundle of plates and prints under her arm, which she will be showing this summer in her Tapawingo Studio in Baysville, Ontario.
Dave, whom Mike refers to as his “Canadian expert,” got stuck into what was supposed to be a minor building project with Mike but wound up as two days of hard-rock mining, as the walls of our house are of stone almost two feet thick!
The final result was the hanging of this antique plant hanger which they found in a second-hand lot for 10 euros, thinking it was “a bargain.”
Note: There are still some available spaces in my calendar of summer workshops, both for the courses and the Gallinero. But you need to write me soon, or phone (+34 658 953399) before they are spoken for.
Links to my other sites on the web:
- Maureen Booth, my main site
- World Printmakers
- Pomegranate Editions on Print Workshop Central
- Printmaking Courses in Spain
- Granada Studio Visits
Share this site
Maureen on the Social Networks
"El Gallinero"--An Artists' & Writers' Refuge in Granada 