In 2018 I walked 1500km from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago in Spain, looping around Fistera-Muxia and ending up in Fatima. My original plan was to walk the 8ookm section in Spain, following the Camino de Santiago route for about 40 days and paint one watercolour a day which I managed to do taking only a couple of days off. These are 20 of my favorite paintings.

The work is an extension of my “Nature: a space of flows” body of work. With this series I focused on human presence in landscape taking the opportunity to play with the use of colour and abstraction. I liked how the structures were defined by the landscape which was reshaped by our actions.

I was thinking about the historical processes relating to the road I was walking. The way connected to a time before Catholicism took over. The roads were following the same paths Pagans moved about the landmass that was once cover by forest. Some of the sections were built by Roman soldiers as they made their way through Spain which was later conquered by the Moors who used these roads to connect their castles and settlements. Later the Catholics pushed the Moors back and the routes were redefined as the pilgrimage becoming a way of keeping the lands settled by Catholics. Now I was walking next to highways which made use of the valleys people have walked through for thousands of years, and the highways connected to a greater network of the European Union.

The buildings and cities reflected this somewhat with a mixture of ancient, old and modern springing up in a variety of ways along the way.  The walking reset my relationship with time and space to a default settings, measuring it within my human scale, one foot in front of the other. I started by walking to get somewhere thinking of the somewhere, within in a few weeks I was thinking about where I was as I moved through space. My walk ended after 1500km in Fatima having continued my journey after reaching Santiago. I am grateful for the experience and recommend it to anyone.

The works are for sale and if you are interesting in purchasing an original or a print please email me directly.  I am thinking about putting the images along with some text from the road into a book(let) at some point when things feel right to do so and when I do I will send out an email about it. Join my email list if you wish to keep up with what is next in my art practice.