I found myself debating whether I should dedicate the little spare time I had to art or to doing my Portuguese grammar homework, when the solution became obvious, “Grammart”. I have already used a lot of the odd leftover objects in this house for the parallel project. This time a lampshade and a pitcher stood out as perfect supports for my grammar homework. The idea is to merge old items from the house with something personal and present, like my struggle with Portuguese grammar.

This is the result after some hours of homework, enhanced by some scribbles by my granddaughter.

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This piece can be strategically placed as a flower vase and allow me to cast quick secret glimpses on the rules during a conversation in Portuguese.

It was an obvious and simple idea, but I am happy with the result. I think the scribbles add a clearly contemporary style to the object, whereas the shape and the rusty signs of ageing are clearly from another time, so the merging of different stories work well here.

For the lampshade, I try my hand at embroidering.

I am a beginner at embroidering, but instead of trying to be neat and look more expert, I am exaggerating my clumsiness. I want the beginners look of the embroidery to reflect my beginners mind with the Portuguese language. Also the lampshade already has machine made embroidered flowers and I want the handmade imperfections to contrast with the machine made and uniform shapes.

The very useful phrase “O gate tem uma chave”, meaning “the cat has a key” was automatically created by the language learning platform, and I just love the absurdity of it.

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I chose to keep the piece monochrome and rather spacious and believe the balance between the existing pattern and the embroidered words work well. Also it is again a very clear contrast between different worlds that reflect the gap between the history of the house and what we bring to it.

In several of the rooms, a lampshade is left dangling from the ceiling and some curtains left on the window. In a way, these lonely left over objects just emphasize the emptiness of the room.

This room is to the North and always cold and dark. It has a weird shape and really low ceiling to one side. When I first saw it, it had very much very dark, heavy furniture in it and I can still feel the energy of this dark heaviness lingering. It took me a good while to even clean it out and it is definitely the space I have spent less minutes in.

I will change this by making “an empty room” one of the objects for the parallel project and by using this whole room as my sketchbook to record many of the stories I hear about the village.

Hera I am, ready to start. A whole white room as my white page. And now I need to decide where to put down the tip of my pen.

The dangling lampshade seems to be the center around which the space moves and I climb the ladder to start there.

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I start with my neighbor Donna Maria’s account of her first memory from when she was 3 or 4 years old and still little enough to be carried by her mother.

When I switch on the light, I am so happy I chose to start at this point in the room:

I start another story on the wall to the East, about Maria Jose walking to school with her little brother, the 4 km to the nearest primary school.

On the back wall, her granddaughter has a dog called Boss.

I realize that all three stories start with relationships- to the mother, to the dog, to the brother. I decide to leave the Western wall to a lonely figure- Donna Laura from the house on the other side of ours.

Her story is very sad. I will let it evolve around the figure in time.

I have written another blogpost about all the glass I have found, and some of the pieces are clearly from a car. I decide to let other parts of the walls start with stories about the cars from which these glasses came- using this room as a sketchbook:

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I prepared several different pens, with the idea of letting fainter drawings lie further back in time than thicker, clearer drawings. I will let go of this though, as I will use the walls more freely and allow myself to grab whatever pen is at hand at the moment.

This is a short video of the current situation:

I am planning to continue filling the walls here with snippets of narratives from the house and the village, until they connect in a web of stories. When the walls are full, I might use a torch to film it in the dark, with just the lit up parts flaring up to be visible- again making the connection to the cave painting. Possibly, I use an IPhone torch, as this is a modern cave painting.

When the walls are filled and filmed, I will probably paint it all white again.

Our latest interventions with paint pots and brushes has brought a sense of transformation to some parts of the house. We are slowly taming the wild patterns and pipes and colour explosions.

We are joking that we have moved from a Pedro Almodovar movie to one by Lars Norén. Two left over chairs appear in the room, and the cold white/grey surroundings with a single lightbulb hanging transform the scene into an interrogation room.

I am walking past this weird random scene in different lights of the day, and start documenting the different atmospheres.

Stepping out from the kitchen into this new reality really highlights the contrast:

Take the walk with me:

 

I am still savoring the trip of going to our wild bathroom for a little longer- before our Scandinavian sparsity will creep in here too.

Drawing on music for Assignment 3 opened up a desire for more spontaneous and intuitive drawing that I continue exploring here. After drawing on left over shower-curtains, I discover a new interesting support in the wallpaper that I pull down from the ceiling of the living room.

Our living room has fake wooden wallpaper on the ceiling and one pink wall behind an industrial set up of pipes, pared with our sparse, last minute quarantine thrown in furniture, besides the ever present wild tiles of course.

It is a relief to start steaming and pulling down the fake ceiling.

While doing so, I am thinking of all the stories these walls and ceilings have heard, of all the laughter and tears during the many years in this house. When I realize that I can pull off rather large chunks of the paper at a time, I see how this can become an interesting support for drawings:

It is the lockdown of the Covid 19 that brought us here so quickly and intertwined our history with the ones of the house.  Tom Woodfin, my dear friend who is sharing this time here with us has made me aware of the composer Marcus J Buehler who has translated the DNA structure of the virus into music:

Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (2019-nCoV) by Markus J. Buehler on #SoundCloud

This piece is roughly one hour long. I will use the old wallpaper as a support for intuitive drawing while listening the the music from the Covid 19 virus structure. In this way, I connect the many stories absorbed from the house, with the beginning of our story here.

I tape the stripes of the wallpaper to the wall of my studio:

I find they look like ancient scrolls and decide to use only Indian ink for my marks, curious to see what spontaneous new story will emerge.

After one hour of loosing myself in the lulling sounds of the virus, combined with a breathwork mix by Tom Woodfin based on the above musical piece above this is what emerged:

As well as connecting our own presence to the house, I was curious to really feel into and listen to this musical interpretation of the virus. It is something so difficult to grasp on a conscious level, and I was hoping to find this way of feeling into what is happening.

What came out of this listening, was a feeling of overwhelm and tiredness. There was no feeling of threat or danger, I saw more a cry for help. There were many tears cried by many eyes and more water than that, some boats and many drops.

This was a fascinating way of exploring how I felt about the Covid 19 virus, which on a conscious level brings up more questions than answers. At the same time, it was an interesting way of connecting our story to this support that has soaked up so many stories told in this house.

Music:

And Tom Woodfin Mixcloud breathwork sessions:

 

I have just completed Part 3, which ended with painting to music- a process I absolutely loved.  A link to the blogpost about Assignment 3:https://clarasdrawing2.design.blog/2020/05/02/assignment-3/(opens in a new tab).

Among the many treasures of old left over items in the house that I am using for this parallel project, were two shower – curtains left hanging. I decide to approach the same process of painting to music using these two very different large curtains as supports.

I start with a curtain with a plastic feel and a maritime theme with sailboats and seagulls:

 

I choose Portuguese music- Fado- with lyrics about the sea and longing. Fado is traditional Portuguese music and it is full of feeling and tears and sad lovestories, that I can very well imagine associated to this village close to the sea. The Portuguese word “Saudade” meaning “Longing” has a special place both in the language and in this type of music.

I was imagining starting by just closing my eyes and moving to the music, but I immediately got drawn to let the seagulls carry loveletters and started adding a letter to every bird.

I could feel tears building up and let some large sad movements with blue acrylics follow the birds and drops (tears) flow.

I felt the drama building up and grabbed a large brush with burning yellow, followed by white using my whole palms.

As the story became denser- figures started appearing, calling out, clinging, longing, running, reaching.

Different tones had different coloured marks, and I let the layers build up.

This is the final painting on the shower curtain:

This painting is again more a story about process than a final, finished piece, like I experienced with Assignment 3 as well.  I felt that starting from a patterned cloth, rather than a blank page conditioned the story too strongly. I was already caught between the lyrics of the music and the motive of the existing curtain, which directed my imagination strongly.

The second showercurtain is in a plain blue grey colour with a silky finish. I feel relief at starting without a print.

I choose to listen to Fado again- traditional, very emotional Portuguese music. Again the theme is unanswered love and longing.

This time, I close my eyes and just let the pen dance over the fabric in movements to the music.

I realize that the touch of this fabric is very sensual, and decide to continue exploring that by painting with my hands and fingers, emphasizing touch.

There are some sharp, painful moments that I see in red:

After approximately 45 minutes of listening to Fado, I have really reached a point of saturation. I step back and see if I can recognize a motive in the musical marks.

It requires pushing the imagination, but I decide to see the face of a lost love in the marks, and bring it forward with black acrylic paint.

The final portrait on the shower curtain is not so convincing- but this process of painting to music brings forward an incredible amount of different marks and layers. It allows for a freedom of marks and use of different media that feels very liberating.

This richness of marks and layers that this free and intuitive approach is adding to the drawings is definitely something I want to continue exploring in various contexts.

 

Since coming to this house, we have had good laughs about the horrible tiles, the crazy layout of the rooms, the low ceilings- which all seemed really funny as we were planning all the great renovations we would do- move walls, open up glassdoors to a wonderful deck, change the whole kitchen and bathrooms of course.

A couple of moths later, due to the Covid 19 virus, here we are all of us safely tucked away without any income. Suddenly we will just have to love the house as it is!

While still believing that it was very temporary, I had some fun painting the kitchen

The bedroom closets

This week, already in quarantine and it dawning that this is not so temporary- the door to Tom’s room:

A couple of chairs:

The door to my room is next 🙂

This is already a very crazy house, but there is no reason to stop now! I am already looking at everything as a potential canvas.

This is how the orange door turned out:

And the door to the gas bottles:

My little assistant is happily painting along with water for now, but she will probably soon discover that my palette is different…

The well is a place of life and death in this area of long , dry summers. Anyone who asks about the house, asks if it has a good well, and yes, it does. There is also a darker side to the wells- a long tradition of suicides being committed in them. I though it was a joke when my Portuguese partner saw it as an absolute priority to order a new metal lid with a lock for the well, but no, it is really taken seriously.

My imagination connected the many stories of drowning and suicide in the wells with the collection of glass I have found on the property. I want to draw portraits under the glass of floating faces at peace.

I start by trying out painting with Cobra watersoluble oil paints on glass. My idea is to introduce water or drops at some points and let the image drown.

I ask my freediving friend Isa to send me some photos of herself under water to understand the facial expressions under water.

I start with some sketches using these facial expressions under water from the photos, but for different faces.

I am currently on Part 2.2 using sgraffitti, so I try out different compositions in this technique :

 

These are quick oil sketches in my A4 sketchbook:

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The glass all have different qualities. I choose a large but thin and clear glass, probably from a shelf for Isa’s delicate face floating under water.

I carry the glass outside and photograph it in different locations. It is a symbolical walk that ends up leaning on the well and finally perched over the opening.

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Where I dip it in water and let it wash away….

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I am quite fascinated by the water soluble oil paints that have a thickness and viscosity that feels like traditional oil while painting, and then wash away like any water soluble paints. That said, the washed away face is too much, it does not leave anything to the imagination of a viewer.

Also, as for the image I painted, I realize that as so often, my very quick sketches in the sketchbook seem more true and have a softer ephemeral quality that I would like to keep. For a second trial on the glass, I choose to sketch lightly using only Payne’s Grey and a light outline.

I am happy with the softness and delicacy of this painting- it catches the ephemeral quality I was after. I decide to not wash it away, but merely let a few drops show the contact with water. I continue by carrying the glass outside and taking photographs.

I particularly like this image where my house and the large tree in front are reflected in Isa’s face.

I decide to leave this glass for now, and choose a thick, frosted glass, probably from a refrigerator for a second image. I am using Isa’s facial expressions but want to feature a different person.

I like the posture and the expression here and decide to put it away and see what wants to happen with it later.

I pick yet another glass, a transparent thicker one and paint a face in a close up, with the arms floating up over the head hinted at.

I like the details of the running paint in the hair while the face is clearer.

So I have three portraits under glass that I will set aside for the moment:

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A light rain is starting to fall, and I have the idea to paint another face on glass and leave it out in the rain and see what happens.

I choose a piece that has a rusty border and a strange pink trace of spray paint. I decide to leave it as dirty as I found it.

And this is the image that I leave out on the well in the light rain:

The next morning , I am surprised and disappointed that nothing much has happened to the image.

I continued sketching on this theme for the Project 2.2 Markmaking materials:

 

 

 

I am quite fascinated by the paintings of Genevieve Figgis, who allows the paint to flow and puddle. She has often used various metal plates as supports. I want to experiment with very liquid paint ( watersoluble oils? Oils and Liquin? Acrylics and water?) and let it have a life of its own on the slippery glass surface. For the narrative, I have looked at how Marc Chagall tells his stories in different planes of the canvas.