walls

Before diving into a colourful world of stars, circles, lines and birds, Lapin, Lapinette and I decided to swing by the temporary Murals exhibition at the Fundació Joan Miró.


Wall artists from Mauritania, the US, Mexico, Thailand and Europe, painted directly onto museum walls alongside the intricate and bold work of graffiti artists from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Singapore— a truly international burst of creativity and colour. The variety and energy of the show was so diverse, so exciting, I'm lucky to have caught it. I loved the contrast between the muted, anonymous hand-painting by the Coopérative Féminine de Djajibiné Gandega, and Lothar Götz's bright, angular precision. I marvelled at Brian Rea's obsessive scrawling and Ludovica Gioscia's waterfall of funky wallpaper. I was mesmerised by Sakarin Krue-On's redder than red, delicately dotted wall.

What gorgeousness.

perspective

picasso and the mammoth

Well, you kind of have to visit the Museu Picasso when in Barcelona, right?
It's one of those things. For days I'd look at the long line stretched down the narrow carrer de Montcada and keep walking. As I've said before, I've never been a Picasso fan, though I do respect and appreciate his work. So should I wait behind the twenty something tourists and spend the nine euro admission fee on a lukewarm feeling? Well, yes.

The line moved surprisingly fast, and I was directed by a bored staff member to where I should start exploring the five gorgeous mansions that housed the museum. The buildings date all the way back to the 13th to 15th centuries, and are gorgeous in and of themselves— as I tried to snap pictures inside the museum, I was reprimanded by another bored, and slightly irritated staff member. Apparently not only are you forbidden from taking photos, you can't even draw inside the museum with anything other than a pencil! A stricter place, I have not visited. I've posted what I was able to sneak past the guards— none of which are a Picasso, I'm afraid.

What to say? The museum is lovely, and my feelings for Picasso remain unchanged. I sipped an Estrella in the museum café, drew a rabbit, and headed out for some more wandering. Just across the street from Museu Picasso, something caught my eye.


A large and wondrously tacky heap of fur and tusk stood in the entrance of what I was happy to discover is Barcelona's first ever hands-on mammoth museum. As I stopped to marvel at the thought of a mammoth museum, the admissions man beckoned to me in Catalan, then Spanish, and eventually English.

"You can touch the bones!"
"That's really great, but I just gave my money to Picasso."
"Come, feel the fur!"
"Wow, that's fur alright. No seriously, I can't."
"Ok, ok, student discount!
"What? Why? No— really, thank you."
"Ok, ok, child price! Come on— come see the mammoth!"

What could I say? It's a mammoth museum!

...with a couple of rhinos and a bou mesquer.
I loved it.

nucleus

The centre, the midpoint, the nexus: Plaça de Catalunya.

broken ceramics, broken bones

The intensity of our artistic marathon warranted some time for reflection and musing. The sky was the deepest cerulean, the sun was warm, it was a perfect day for a walk in a park. Spread out high upon the hills of Barcelona, is a green wonderland of cacti with waves of shattered ceramics, Gaudí's Parc Güell.

Conceived as a housing development by Eusebi Güell, the project never caught on. Gaudí bought one of the two houses nestled within the Parc, and set to work transforming the land into a municipal garden— a pocket of peace above the bustling city.

Hidden amongst the trees are curving stairways, fairytale buildings and an enormous terrace adorned with a long serpentine bench of colourful broken tiles. As I was midway through a sketch, the afternoon tranquillity was interrupted by the disturbing sound of fist hitting torso.


A territorial dispute between trinket vendors suddenly erupted into violence. As the blur of flying fists and kicking feet came crashing towards me, I threw my sketchbook into my bag and fled, just as an old man drove a wooden plank into another man's head.

I abhor violence. I ran off into the trees until I could no longer hear the shouting. Beneath limbs shaded green, I found the quiet again. Along a meandering path, I stumbled upon the most beautiful sight in the park. It was so marvellous, and dare I say perfect, that I wondered if it was crafted by some artist's hands.


Two knobby, rolling trees, sighing into each other, entwined like lovers.

the greys

the curve of a clavicle

When Lapin asked me if I might feel like a bit of figure drawing, my heart leapt out of my chest. To say I love figure drawing would not come close to how I feel about the human form on paper. To say I'm passionate about capturing muscle, fat and bone with a pen, crayon or pencil, does not express the flutter in my heart and belly when moving my fingers across the page, within the curve of a clavicle.

On the metro to Jaume I, Lapin, Nina and I warmed up our creative muscles with a little sketching, unaware that we were being carefully watched. As we returned our sketchbooks to our bags and hopped off the train, a young guy came running up to me with a piece of paper and an enormous grin. I have no idea what he said to me, but when I looked at the paper he thrust into my hands before running back to his seat, I was overwhelmed. I managed to look up just in time to catch his eyes and exchange smiles before he was sped away.

That's Lapin in the hat, sketching me sketching a passenger!

In a narrow alley stands the humble building that housed our mid-morning treat. The Cercle Artístic de St. Lluc was founded in 1893 by a group of prominent artists that included Antoni Utrillo, Alexandre de Riquer and Antonio Gaudí, and was frequented by artistic big shots like Joan Miró. I loved watching the white and silver-haired artists with their thumb-printed wooden boxes of charcoal, pads of thick paper and eyes squinted in concentration. To think we were drawing where Miró drew...


After sketching the morning away, we meandered over to a lovely nearby café that had the most exquisite pasta and home-made ice cream. Nina, Lapin and I got out our various art supplies and took to drawing on our paper place mats during our post-pasta coffee.

Lapin's drawing of me sketching The Girl with the Thong.

Bellies full, we headed out to an art supply store where Urban Sketchers Bologna correspondent Miguel Herranz, aka Freekhand, met up with us. As luck would have it, Miguel was in town the week I was, and I not only had the opportunity to meet him, but to draw with him. I've been a huge fan of Miguel's for ages— so you can imagine how thrilled I was to sketch with him and listen to his stories. Miguel, Lapin and Nina are all such talented and inspiring artists, I felt so honoured to draw, eat and chat with them.

I was reminded of something Picasso once said: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." While my move to Istanbul has been an exciting turn in my life, I've somehow hit a block with my artwork. I feel inspired to travel and experience new things, but not to draw the way I had been in San Francisco. I find it hard to focus and get to work, I have difficulty bringing the bucket up from the well of my mind. Inspiration seems to be walking by. When Nina, Miguel and Lapin shared their sketchbooks and thoughts with me, I was amazed by the amount of work that had flowed out of them— and it wasn't just the number of pages and books and ideas that impressed me, but the absolute beauty of them. I'll never forget the chills I got when Lapin pulled open drawer after drawer of a file cabinet, each packed full of sketchbooks in all sizes. Indeed, inspiration must find your fingers moving, your mind racing, or else it passes you by.


As Miguel, Lapin and I sat down on Passeig de Gracia to sketch the Modernist house Manzana de Oro, we asked a passerby on the sidewalk if he would be so kind to take our picture. He introduced himself as Valentino, and announced that he would do one better. Valentino sketched us.



A most marvellous day of art and conversation ended with a glorious gazpacho from the sumptuous kitchen of Lapinette. Wine, art, soup and laughter with friends on a warm May night. Does it get any better than that?