My fourth Peruvian trip: Chivay part two

*

 Chivay, mountain with blue sky, oil on card, 24.2 x 21 cm - unavailable

 Chivay, River Colca, hillside, oil on card, 25 x 19 cm unavailable

Chivay, mountainside, oil on card, 21.6 x 24.5 cm unavailable

The mountains round Chivay are often extremely rocky with just grasses or cacti (some of these rather magnificent) for vegetation. The effect can be rather severe.

 It didn't rain at all for the first week, then there was a phase when the clouds build up to storm in the mid-afternoon.

Every now and then in the paths around Chivay you run into a shepherd with a few sheep. Sometimes the shepherds are young children, sometimes old people. They are quite personable, but often shy- mountain people perhaps. There are few cars and it is an extremely agreeable place to work.

*

The mountain, Palhoça; miniaturism

The mountain, Palhoça, oil on card, 11.7 / 14.7 cm

Palhoça is one of those towns on the periphery of Florianopolis, like so many satellite towns in other Brazilian cities, so undistinguished that is it difficult to know quite why it exists.

But there is the mountain: undeniable, like the mountains in Poussin, rendering all below to insignificance.

*

Further thoughts on miniaturism, and small painting- notably the observations that the act of painting small seems happily to place one in opposition to bombast -as I write, as my country idiotically flings money at that costly, grandiose, pea-brained extravagance called the Olympic Games, giving good taxpayers money on ephemeral kitsch while cutting vital assistance for people with severe disabilities.

More pertinently, have not most art lovers at some point in their pilgrimages found themselves wandering with  dulled eyes through vast chambers in European Galleries and Palaces, uncharmed by endless rows of joyless gigantic Baroque paintings, extolling this or that official virtue, lined up in great halls in European galleries and palace, to find themselves suddenly delighted by a small and intimate painted voice?