Pink clay of San Millán

Artist Residency Diary #1

"El punto débil," I pronounced proudly, referring to all the art materials in front of me—crayons of all colors, pencils, and oil pastels. A couple of moments before that, I had learned that it means “a weak spot” in Spanish.

I was sitting in a monastery in the mountains of Rioja, on the verge of the Pyrenees and in the middle of the Santiago de Compostela road. I was pushing a pink Sennelier oil pastel up and down the paper while looking at the loud bell tower in front of me. Little swallows—adults and babies—were flying across the courtyard, against the blue sky. Their music stopped when the bell loudly told us the hour. The bell stopped me as well. This was probably the most wonderful studio that I have ever worked in: I was sitting behind a big wooden table, surrounded by the old Renaissance walls of the Benedictine monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla.

I was invited to an artist residency in the Spanish mountains - a client of mine recommended me to the residency organisers; and here I am—spending ten days looking at the pink earth full of clay and slow landscapes. At the moment, I am in the process of understanding the place—what story it is trying to tell me and how come this is the place where the first books in the Spanish language appeared. All the little details—moments and sensations—will be, of course, translated into the map that will tell a story, because each place, no matter how small, indeed has one.

I arrived from Paris to Bilbao on a one-hour-and-twenty-minute flight, and then I got a taxi to take me deep into the continent, away from the Atlantic. On my way, I passed through three different Spanish departments—from the Basque Country to Navarra to Rioja. I was mesmerized by rolling hills, endless grapevines, and eagles watching over the fields. "Águila," José Luis the taxi driver told me, pointing at the eagle. "Girasol," he continued, pointing at the big yellow sunflower. There was no evident connection between them; they were just elements of the Riojan landscape and an invitation to understand it. I wondered