A visit to São Francisco do Sul

  *

São Francisco do Sul, a railway crossing, oil on card, 14 x 9.5 cm  - available

 

 

 

 

São Francisco do Sul, a yacht, oil on card, 11 x 9 cm   available

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures from a trip up to São Francisco do Sul: the port has a touristic charm, with many well preserved, charmingly painted buildings in various eclectic, quasi Art Noveau or Deco styles.

It also has a pleasingly Waitsian element: great freight trains move continually transporting something or other from a giant and noxious factory , near which are bars with varying degrees of seediness. 

 

 

Train Song by Tom Waits:

 

Well I broke down in East St. Louis on the Kansas City line
Drunk up all my money that I borrowed every time
And I fell down at the derby, the night's black as a crow
It was a train that took me away from here
But a train can't bring me home
What made my dreams so hollow was standing at the depot
With a steeple full of swallows that could never ring the bell
And I've come ten thousand miles away, not one thing to show
It was a train that took me away from here
But a train can't bring me home

 

 

 

*

Egypt: some decisions

The Rough Guide doesn't include Alexandria among it`s top twenty-eight things not to miss, and its entry for the city is less than positive. I`ve used Rough Guides extensively, in Italy, Chile, Brazil and Tunisia and  although I`d quibble with specific entries on hotels or restaurants, say, I`ve found their recommendations to be prescient. Any romanticism I feel about the idea of visiting the city of Cavafy and Durrell has been tempered, and given the time restrictions on my Egypt trip, the proposed itinerary will be:

Cairo-Luxor-Aswan - possibly Abu Simbel- Cairo

Thus I am following a very standard touristic itinerary, albeit one in which i spend more time than usual in Cairo.

The risk of traveling to a "new" place is that I get sucked into tourist painting- a feeling of obligation to paint what is known or espected, rather than responding to my actual experiences. I think that I became somewhat trapped in the Italian trip by romantic expectations. I hope to avoid this in part by the longer stay in Cairo, and by spending long enough in the other places to overcome the obvious. 

In truth, in planning painting trips, I always get it wrong, as. Surprise, the basis of inspiration, cannot be planned. And expectations distort, as does research, and it is very hard to predict if a place will really lend itself to inspiration or not. tourist sites are often cleaned and ordered to the point of sterility, so that their local character is lost to the demands of a massive international industry.

On Moçambique beach

*

On Moçambique beach, oil on card, 12 x 14 cm

This is a wonderful beach for painting, often empty of people and with its own peculiar light.

*

The dunes from Joaquina

*

The dunes from Joaquina, oil on card, 14.5 x 12 cm available

This is the size I shall be taking to Egypt. 

The larger sizes are only sometimes successful. The virtue of these little pochades is surely in the sense of concentration they convey. If I move up to about 18 x 16 cm, say, that feeling of concentration is diffused. The painting is neither intense and  little nor big and  free.

Joaquina, oil on card, 14 x 12 cm    SOLD

Painted from the dunes, looking down. I am not sure if I perfectly captured the way the dunes cut into the vegetation, but I'm happy with the sense of the scale of the place.

Fields on the way to Santo Antonio de Lisboa

Fields on the way to Santo Antonio de Lisboa, oil on card, 12.5 x 15 cm  unavailable

I'd wanted to stop here for a while but never did. 

I am reverting to a smaller format again. I miss the intensity that comes from working small.

A road in the North of the island

A road in the North of the island, oil on card, 14.5 x 10.5 cm  unavailable

Very hot, almost unpleasantly so. I am counting off the days until I go to the UK and Egypt: six weeks exactly.