The Last Birds and Mammals of Barcelona 2022. Acrylic on thing, 72 x 68"
Henry Miller wrote “If there is a genuine need, it will be met”.
Last Sunday I was out of paper, canvas, panels, boards, any traditional substrate to paint pictures on. I was using the heavier pages from an old Texas Atlas and just ran out when Mike stopped by to drop off a tri-panel room divider he picked up for a couple bucks at a barn sale. Not much of a genuine life need, but in the fly by night, seat of pants world of self-promoted professional artist, a real and true display of providence from higher powers. Time and again friends come through without my asking. Paints get dropped off at my door from an anonymous donor. College professor friends bring over abandoned student work I drool to paint over. Or, praise be, I actually sell a painting...
So I took Mike’s kind offering and gave myself a Friday deadline in order to deliver it on Saturday to the Member exhibition at the local art association.
More Spain is coming out in paint. One thing Rose and I couldn’t help but notice was the lack of animal life in the parts of Catalunya we visited— Barcelona and a couple other towns to the north and south. Not more than five bird species were spotted (three in the painting). Forget about rodentia and larger wild mammals. I’m sure they’re out there. They just wouldn’t show their faces. And we walked. A lot. About 130 miles throughout the city and countryside. Perhaps animal life gets more intensely skiddish and shy in proportion to the time human beings have terrorized an environment. And Spain is very human old. Not like the “new” land I live in with fox, deer, vole, rabbit, mouse, raccoon, woodchuck, skunk, robin, crackle, tufted titmouse, chickadee, woodpecker (pileated and Hairy), Cooper‘s hawk, peregrine falcon, sparrow, mourning dove, bluebird, bluejay—to name a few wild lives sharing our backyard. Give us time though. The humans here are sooo ready to speed up extinction. The bling is everywhere, shining up faces just itchin’ to exterminate.
Lastly, in the far right panel you’ll notice a cat waiter serving a dog in repose. The dogs in Northeast Spain are abundant, amazingly well-trained, and spoiled rotten. We passed hundreds of them, many unleashed, and not a single one was ever threatening. No barks, no growls. The cats though were ferule wanderers and very depressed, sometimes grouped in gangs, thinning themselves in the sun.
The back panels provide a pathway for all and sundry toward freedom. I learned the easy way (in privileged credit-card fashion) how useless federal governments are beyond getting my mail delivered cheaply and on time.
Wish me luck at the Member’s Exhibition. If I win a cash prize, I’m donating it to the credit card bill.
