Living in Spain

I love living in Spain, I have a full social life but that is mainly due to the fact that I occupy almost exclusively the left-side of the brain rather than previously enjoying very imaginative thoughts in the right-side and sometimes it is stressful; it hurts, even physically at times. It is wonderfully stimulating, getting people together, seeing people who I had been instrumental in bringing together getting on so well. I am quite fit. I swim a lot, I go cycling. During the summer, I cycle to the coast and back – either Plaja de Pals or L’Escala. Both have “free” beaches, in other words, wear as much or as little (in other words, nothing ) as you wish! So I travel very light and take enormous pleasure when I arrived in ripping off all my cycling gear and running naked into the sea. And of course no one takes any notice. Some English people are rather prudish about nudism or they think it is a kind of perversion or it is about ogling beautiful bodies. Nude bodies, even young women, on a beach are definitely not sexy! When it is a simple free beach, it seems the most natural thing in the world. And just great fun. Cool. In Latin American Spanish, chevere.

I paint a lot and have had several exhibitions but all the time I feel I have lost part of me: the imagination, the movies in my head. Maybe it is still there (rather too late to worry about it now), I just need to find out how to get back to those feelings.

Ironically, by this time I was now an artist but I occupied the part of my brain which is better suited for logic design. So if you know any way I can get back to that lovely place called Right, the imaginative part, even if it involves lots of tears, then let me know straight away!

People often ask me for how long I had been painting and I replied that it is from about the year 2000 which is when I stopped working in electronics. But drawing had been part of my work for many years, sketching control units and various boxes. I don’t remember the year but, at that time, I was attending St George’s Chapel in Windsor. I was quite well integrated into the life of the chapel because I had designed a database for the Friends of the chapel and I was also a guide on duty to assist visitors. And the Queen’s Chaplain led a retreat near Hastings and some of us were from the congregation of St George’s and the rest from the Royal Chapel which is deep in Windsor Park. There were about 10 of us altogether. I took a drawing pad and sketched some cottages. One of the group liked the drawings so much, she asked me to paint the house where she lived. It was owned by her son; she lived in the granny annexe. That watercolour is still on my website and it led to many more. Firstly, I painted pubs close to where I lived in Addlestone and sold them to the owners (usually). And then when I moved to Spain, I became more adventurous in subjects. And I started using oils and acrylics.

And I gradually realised that I didn’t have to be so accurate with the number of windows across a building. Who cares? It’s art innit. So by around 2016, I was painting all kinds of subjects in various mediums. And exhibiting them and even selling some. And my greetings cards based on my paintings were sold in three shops in Girona.

I love to teach art although I never do it formally. Being a technical kind of person, I enjoy the technology of Art, especially colour. I used to enjoy explaining why blue and yellow made green (due to there being a small amount of green in each of the pigments because a totally pure blue and yellow don’t exist. If they did, mixing yellow and blue would give a result of nothing because they would completely cancel out).