cycling suffolk

And there we go. My friend Pascale and I for a long rainy wet weekend, to celebrate our birthdays.

We suffered cold (me, almost hypothermia, bloody stupid tent), hunger, exhaustion and clouds of bugs, including those horrible bugs that have some kind of scissors at the front and rear and get into your ears and eat you inside. I had a whole family of them inside my tent.

But nevertheless we enjoyed a great scenery, saw millions of rabbits, clouds of swallows, the breeze of the sea, the best fish and chips (or whale and chips it seemed), the great local beer and very VERY lovely people.

fresita

and the first strawberry in my garden is here! It's so red and perfect and it looks yummy. But I'm very tempted not to eat it. It's so beautiful...

I hope I will have enough for a plate full of them with cream on time for the Wimbledon final.

hey ladies

get funky.
Finally I've had some time to spend in the studio, starting a new series. Nudity galore. Courtesy of my free models in my local steam room.

berries and flowers

Sami behind the flowers.
Wimbledon started and my strawberries are not quite ready yet. Nor the blackberries, but when they are ready you will see the cakes I will make. YUUUUUM.

parceled out

Three prints I made while I experienced one of my darkest moments along with an ex-voto are on the way to Mexico.

cycling

To deliver prints to my favorite gallery, I have to cross to the other side of London but it is a very nice ride. Through Regent's canal, pass the zoo, pass little Venice, pass Kensington Gardens (no cycling) and to Notting Hill. No traffic, just the boats. No noise but quacks and ♭♩chip chip chips♬ twee twee ♪.

Sunday

To the flower market. We need colours for the window box outside the studio.

Saturday

A summer festival in the neighbourhood.

to do to day

* chine-collé.

* paint an ex-voto (if Sami permits me).

* finish one of the books I'm illustrating.

* find time to eat.

Varnishing Day

I will be posting through the week my favourite pieces of the Summer Show.

Yesterday there was just time to see where my print was hanged and to say hello to the printmakers I know and to meet other artists and to eat the delicious food and to drink my never-empty glass of champagne.

Dorset

We spent a perfect weekend in bloody paradise. Dorset is BEAUTIFUL and I want to live there, very close to Corfe Castle and I will have ducks and a sheep and a cow and Sami will be playing with rabbits and we'll have a big printing studio and a ceramic studio and I will plant carrots and potatoes and loads of other vegetables. And then I'll learn to sail and I will have a vessel and I will sail to France and will bring french sausages and cheese, and I will eat it with apple chutney because I learned this weekend that apple chutney is delicious on a piece of bread and cheese.

Again!

I am dancing, I am happy. One of my prints have been selected for the Summer Exhibition in the Royal Academy of Arts! Two years in a row, that's not bad huh?

♪ Tra la la larala larala ♬

Lasting Impressions

Greenwich Printmakers Association celebrates its 30th Anniversary. We will be exhibiting in the National Theatre from the 25th of May until the 4th of July.

I got some tickets for the private view, if anybody is interested, please let me know. See you there!

Sami no happy

My poor cat... Besides being overweight, therefore on a diet, now he's got a war wound which can't stop scratching so I had to dress him as a lamp until it heals.

And he doesn't like it at all.

and more baby stuff

for baby Emilia. It's in the post!

a good weekend

full of friends, cakes and animals.

Sami is fat

We don't understand. We have changed his food for stuff with less fat. We don't give him more than allowed and still Sami is getting fatter and fatter with the minutes.

So he's either depressed and stealing food from the covert at midnight or he is getting food somewhere else. Today some little neighbours helped me to make this ads that I will stick around.

If you live in London N6 and see a very fatty tabby cat, please please please don't feed the animal.

art from my land

In Jalisco, where I'm from, there are around twelve ethnic groups. One of them is the Huicholes (who live actually in between Jalisco and Nayarit). We saw Huicholes in Sayulita and I spent a fortune in their chucherias.

That's the good thing about being away. I come back to Mexico and notice things that have become part of the landscape. All my life I've seen them around selling their crafts and even having huichol things at home, but just now I've noticed how very psychedelic, abstract and beautiful this art is.

In the past, the Huicholes were fierce warriors and now they are artists, when they are not farming. My kind of people. Yes yes yes. They are still tough cookies, dammit, it is very difficult to extract a smile or some piece of information about the meaning of their colourful artwork and they never ever allow you to take a picture of them.

In their craftsmanship, the recurrent theme are their deities. The God Peyote, The God Deer, The God Corn, etc. There are a few Huichol artist who even exhibit regularly in galleries in other countries. The most important, I think is José Benítez Sánchez, who is also the governor of an indigenous community he helped found. I think he is also a shaman and got more than two wives... He sounds to me like a great guy.

the beach

My sister and I decided to defy the general paranoia and try to enjoy some days in a nice Pacific beach, by the coast of Nayarit.

Many places were closed so I couldn't eat like I normally do (like a pig), but I guess that was good. The beach was there, waiting for us, beautiful and the water was perfect. It was probably the last place on earth someone can get ill. Me, at least, it was exactly the paradise I needed to make this trip worthy.

Sad days

These days have been so surreal. My trip became a scene of a boring catastrophe movie, waiting for Will Smith to come and save the planet.

The city is paralized and there's not much to do. We have to wear masks. We can't kiss each other hello or goodbye. I couldn't visit a good friend to know his baby. I can't even go to the park to practice my t'ai chi! Every sneeze or cough becomes a nightmare... Paranoia paranoia.

I had, with all the pain in my heart to change my ticket for a week earlier. I hope they don't cancel the flights, anything can happen now. All I want is to be with Chamaco and Sami. Booo.

Mexicoooo

It's almost been a week since I arrived in Mexico and all these days have gone in adjusting the internal clock and sorting out boring things like bank account, accountancy, taxes etc., so in the free spaces I have to try as much as possible to do nice things and see my friends.

Yesterday I went to Puebla with my sister to visit a Talavera pottery factory, I think the guy -our guide- said that they are the oldest and finest of the certified factories. The producers of Talavera have to follow rules and strict norms and belong to an Association to be able to call their pieces Talavera. I think they are just allowed to use a limited amount of colours and certain designs and to follow the traditional process...

This year I haven't been able to stuff my face with my beloved Mexican food. Moctezuma's revenge is been quite hard on me this time.

Moctezuma's revenge: bad things happening to the stomach.