The view from Christmas

I realised suddenly today I had yet to finish going through my photographs from Cyprus, and yet already half term is approaching! Madness.
So this week I was pursuing the Prado website when I had yet to pack away my photographs from my last break. I have spent very little time on this blog this week primarily because I was revisiting Cyprus through the wonderful world of paint. I decided come what may to stay in my painting room, an airless windowless ex dark room and paint last Tuesday. Yes, it has a small amount of ventilation but the fumes probably contributed to a low level but debilitating headache for the rest of the week.
The painting are very green, in more ways than one. I had tried to paint them in my head, but as always they did not go quite to plan, but it is as always a learning curve.
I veer from figurative to abstract and need to revisit them next week. Interestingly they are quite claustrophobic paintings, which I wonder if reflects the place I paint. I have also just about finished writing two lots of rationale, which pleases me no end.

It was good to revisit the photographs to remind me of the light, these were taken on the road back to the village from Mehmetcik, any thoughts you may harbour of year round sunshine on Cyprus can be disabused when you see how the clouds roll across at great speed and shed their load daily, it has rained copiously since we were there and temperatures have struggled to get into double figures.

Any plans we had for a warm winter retirement have been thoroughly scuppered by our experience there this winter. It seems to me that you are much warmer when in a climate that is geared up for the cold with well insulated houses, not the concrete gulags of Cyprus. So Berlin it is then!