From break to breakthrough
Making space for the creative process, at home or away
The following is a public service announcement for all those cowering from the liquid gunmetal-grey skies on this bone-chilling coast: Crank up the Vitamin D. We need 800-1000 IUs per day so pop a supplement or a teaspoon of cod liver oil, or eat wild salmon (600-1000 per 100 g or 3.5 oz.) regularly. Do it for your bones and teeth. For vegans it’s a bit trickier but here’s a fun fact: mushrooms, the only produce that contains Vitamin D, can generate a goodly dose when they’ve been exposed to sun or sunlamps — just like peoples — so feast on some UV-ray-enhanced mushrooms. Lecture over.
When other mushrooms are threatening to colonize the dark corners of my mind and between my toes, when the skies are as grey and shapeless as my sweatpants, I see these as signs that it’s time to let my skin generate some Vitamin D. I joined the throng of half of all Canadians taking winter breaks this year, with the largest percentage (30%) descending on Mexico and the Caribbean. Puerto Vallarta, just a five-hour flight south on this same west coast of North America, is lousy with Canuckleheads this year.
I am not doing my country proud with my weak attempts to converse with the locals. Asking questions in that lovely romance language leads to answers I can’t understand so I tend to stick with agreement statements like Aquí hay mucho pollos asados. (“There are many roasted chickens here”). This is maybe why (or because) I spend most of the hot, sunny hours in the rental apartment pursuing my digital-nomad dream of making stuff and writing about it wherever I go.
It never works out as planned though I pack with the best intentions. My carry-on contains the usual bag of tricks: white linen cloth; a colourful selection of embroidery floss and hoop; two sashiko sewing needles (they always get through security screening); small containers of red, white, yellow and blue acrylic fluid; two thin paintbrushes; sketchbook and assorted black brush-pens.
Once I’m settled in the rental unit I set up my art supplies. I feel sort of obliged to artistically-render the luscious plants and birds, beaches and sunsets out there but I’m not really into it even if they do turn out which they rarely do. My overwrought sketches of philodendron leaves look like a waste pile of vein-y heart organs. I’m baffled at how to depict the papery folds of bougainvillia blossoms even when I try copying some online examples by other artists. The whole exercise is as onerous as Grade 6 map-colouring which also left me bad-tempered and bored. In the end, as it often happens, the paintbrush rag is more interesting than my tortured attempts.
It’s a wadded-up piece of two-ply paper towel from a roll I found under the sink but the paint has diffused in a way that reminds me of the surf or the jungly mountains above the Old Town so when it’s dry I smooth it out and pull apart the two bound layers into two translucent mirror images. I know these would be even more translucent if they were brushed onto a wood panel with acrylic medium and coated with a waxy finish.
I rummage around the kitchen and locate a glass baking dish and fill it with water to soak another half sheet from the paper-towel roll then lay each soaked sheet out on a glass shelf I removed from the refrigerator — this is the danger of renting your holiday home to artists — then drop or brush on different diluted mixed colours, adding some patterns here and there with the water-based brush pens. Soon I am as absorbed in this material exploration as the paint blooming in the soaked fibres. I set each swatch out on more paper towels to dry and when I run out of all horizontal surfaces I string them up like laundry lines across the open window frames and between chairs, laying down even more paper on the floor to catch the drips.
There are no photos of that creative process here. I normally make a point of posting photo-documentation but on the outside chance that the condo owner might see their vacation unit turned into a chaotic printmaking factory, that image is left up to the imagination.
Now back home in this fresh, green coastal city on the foggy edge of a temperate rainforest my brain is still humming with ideas for collaging those test tissues as backgrounds for sketches of patterns captured in morning and evening walks through the streets of the Old Town.
That stack of painted papers holds the creative energy for a new artwork series: the best souvenir of any travels.
I love getting a peek into that creative brain of yours!