Art Adventure in Barcelona

My son, (Ben Davis, Beats-On-Tap) says I am not a good blogger because I don’t post enough. He’s right. After all, he blogs regularly about music and it is worth checking out! I wait and wait until something really inspires me. Well it hit me tonight as I walked into my studio. My husband and I had just returned from the airport after dropping off our daughter Stephanie to fly to Barcelona, Spain for 3 months.  No… not as part of a college program, or any program…  After Freshman year at Connecticut College, Steph felt she needed to break out and away from the constraints of  art classroom assignments and see what kind of artist she could really become.  Somehow she landed upon a website for Estudio-Nomada. She applied and was accepted to the independent art program in Barcelona. She found a family to live with and after  private lessons of Krav Maga, self defense class by the best in the State at breakthru fitness.… off she went.

For a moment I felt empty walking back into the art studio without her paint brush in action as it had been all summer. She had just completed a large canvas and her palette papers were still there like their own work of art.

Her glass lamp-working table left with glass all about and an empty gas tank.

…but then I found myself sifting through her work table. I had not touched her side of the studio for weeks as she prepared her journals and inspirations for her 3 month art adventure. I admit I was tempted to throw out some scraps and gain some real estate on the 6 foot table but I never did and tonight I could not break away from the table of art books, cuttings of colorful hand-painted paper, mini cards, poems, fabric journals and paintings. With a list of things to accomplish myself, I just sat and let the colors and textures soak into my senses and let the time slip away.

The last thing we had done together at home was sit across from each other on our yoga mats and say a final Namaste. Finding her work left behind was like another ujjayia breath left from her in the room.

I am tempted to photograph every page of her journals and publish them. Don’t worry Steph…. I kept them closed. But seriously. Her writing is Bob Dylanesque and her paintings a mix of Dali, Kandinsky and Matisse wrapped up in one hippy, vibe, mystical, mother-earth-loving imagination. Is that a genre??

Ok, I’m not jealous or anything. I wouldn’t want to spend three months painting with a group of artists from around the world with instructors and the inspiration of an artistic european city. Nooo….Not at all. I always remind myself that her grand mother, Fae Woolf, was a fine artist who only started painting at the age of forty. Her mother, a decorative artist, who started painting at the age of twenty and she began at the age of two and never left the art studio. She started mirroring images, mixing colors and collaging by age five. So what will three months in Barcelona at age nineteen do for her? I hope to chronicle her experience by posting her work here and there over the next three months. I hope you will become a fan of her as well.

It is hard not to get lost in her passion for her work. Her cat is obviously protecting her territory so I guess I will not be cleaning up tonight!