Letting go.

Three weeks ago I drove  my 18 year old car over 1000 kms  to the tiny village of Farrera in the Spanish Pyrenees, to try to paint my way back into writing my screenplay.
My destination was  El Centre d’Art i Natura,  'a  truly inspiring  place for artists and researchers from all over the world.'  It's situated at an altitude of 1,360 m in the heart of the Catalan Pyrenees, 250 km from Barcelona and not far from Andorra.   The village  benefits from - the website says-  an exceptionally  peaceful setting, ideally suited to reflection, inspiration and creative work. I knew this  to be true.  My last visit was  eight years ago.

By the first weekend, what happened, to my great surprise,  was that I  let my screenplay go.  I said a swift silent  goodbye  to four years  work, and adios to an exciting  dream.

How did this happen ?

 Following a conversation with Odile, a young multi media artist at the center,  as I struggled to explain the plot of my screenplay to her, I  knew in my heart of hearts it  had  passed its sell-by date.
I was blabbering.

The energy to grapple, to play, to wrestle with it had simply died.

I'd tried  many times last year to let it go, but some part of me just wouldn't give up. My identity as a writer was married to it.

 Last year in a valiant effort to get to know what my characters wanted and needed,  I started to  blog  about them, daily. 

I  blogged  with  words and images. I loved this practice.   Often I used my own sketches and paintings, pretending the were the work of my protagonist's mother Hana.   I hoped somehow that Jewish Hana would speak to me.  She  did, and she  didn't.
I became fascinated by  this 'research.'
I learned masses about my Jewish heritage. I learned screeds about Jewish artists who painted before, during and after the Holocaust.  Some part of me felt affiliated to this 'tribe.'

 I studied the life and work of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis.
Friend of Klee and Kandinsky, this  extraordinary artist who when rounded up to be sent to a concentration  camp, packed her small suitcase with paints, brown paper, and brushes, 'so that she  could teach the children to paint, to distract them, to give them a means of expressing themselves.'

My  story  expanded but it didn't move  forweard.  It delved deep into Universal themes, but stayed stubornly mute.
Whose story is this was the incessant question I couldn't answer.  Is  it Holocaust survivor artist Hana's, or is it her artist daughter Shifra's?

 I became an avid researcher of  Jewish  art in Europe during the Holocaust period.
The Irish I discovered treated the Jews  terribly.  Why then  did my father flee there? And did he  find his way to Ireland via Spain ? Via The Pyrenees ?
 My  own lost heritage stirred and murmured in my heart. My disappeared  Jewish father became even more mysterious.

Then two weeks ago, in a peaceful  Catalan village with just 22 inhabitants- in a part of Spain etched, colored, molded by  the  history of  fugitives  escaping wars and persecution - something alchemical   happened.

My screenplay gently left me.  Like a bird migrating or escaping,  it disappeared over the mountain tops .   I have a sense it will come back in another form, in another reincarnation. Like the fugitives, it will reinvent itself, somehow,  somewhere.

.

I've  returned home inspired, free of my screenplay, feeling new and painting again. 

Six years ago when I started to write my memoir Drawn by a  Star, I stopped painting. It seemed  I couldn't  write and paint at the same time.

Life is often contrary .  Or am I contrary?  

So here I am  back to being an artist again.!
I'm   going  to continue to blog and write  travel stories. This time round though, I'll  do both.  I will.  I promise.   And  I'll  do what I can to help my  fugitive screenplay characters metamorphose. I'll become my own under cover resistance leader.

My new paint brush feels like a magic wand .   Rich colours- blues and turquoise greens, crimson and cadmium orange- slide effortlessly onto pristine white canvases.  Colour draws me into its sensual  world . Depth and texture play games with me. I find myself in a place of awe.   And Gold !  In over 40 years of painting I've  never ever used  gold.  It seems a  metaphor for my time in the Pyrenees.   Gold is now at my  fingertips .  I've crossed my mountain pass. Learned valuable lessons,  I'm free again. New horizons beckon.

Something new  will come from these four years  focused on the screenplay, surely? 
 Something already has!

During my first week at Farrera, I made a book online of last years blog.   Called Shifra's Sketchbooks  it was  waiting for me when I returned to my  village in Andalucia.
It feels a fitting tribute to a dream which once was vital, and now is not.

And brewing, there's  a short animated  film based on  the  paintings  and sketches I made in Farrera.

Watch this space !!

Thank you Odile.  Thank you Farrera.  Mil gracias Luis y Cesca.

http://www.farreracan.cat/ang/

www.healingartjourneys.com

Gràcies un milió volgut Luis i Cesca per a la creació d'un lloc tan meravellós per a tanta gent a venir i explorar les seves idees, treballar en els seus projectes, descobrir la bellesa del seu poble, i gaudir del que se sent en ser alimentat com una persona creativa. Ha creat alguna cosa veritablement únic, barrejant els seus talents especials per donar suport als altres com el seu desenvolupar. Gràcies des del fons del meu cor. I gràcies Arnau for the fabulous meals you cooked, most of which I photographed.  Somebody should make a  book of photos of  your culinary creations !!
Oh and thank you Google translate . I hope you haven't made too many embarrassing  mistakes !