Spain is one of the top tourist destinations in the world, I should know since I spent almost two months there many moon ago. For some time they had been conquered by the Moors from northern Africa, who changed their architecture and culture significantly for several hundred years mostly in the south. To this day Spain is a loose collection of regions each with its own claim to sovereignty, seemingly never getting along yet still together as a country. Sounds familiar to a Canadian. In the north of Spain is Basque country, I spent time up there in Donostia... on the train a person asked me where I was going and I said San Sebastian, and he corrected me over and over... Donostia, Donostia he kept saying. Later the significance of this became clear, the Spanish government calls it San Sebastian but the Basque call it Donostia. Having done a lot of paintings on location in Spain, nearly 150 if I recall, it was tough to find a subject for this painting, so I picked a google map view from smack in the middle of the mountainous region. The variations in hue and chroma were surprising. Old rocky mountains had a rust coloured moss on them, and the mountains seemed to get darker the further away they were. I wonder if it was a trick of the camera, since the material I work from in this series is all from a camera and shown on a screen. As I recall, the horizon mountains were a flat purple, leaning blue. Hmmm, I will have to go back and check it out. Science conference anyone?
World Inspired Landscapes: Spain, watercolour 7 x 10" hot press, April 2025 (No. 2040b)
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