Reporting From Can Serrat

So yes, indeed I have arrived and spent my first day here at the residency. I'm in heaven. I have the big, airy, south-facing room with wonderful light, chirping birds, blue skies, fluffy clouds and ample work tables. 

I lurked around with my camera this morning to take some shots for you of the shared studios too so you could see what they looked like. So this is not my work and I hope the artist will not mind as I think all pictures of paintings and paint are marvelous.

We said good-bye today to a man from New Zealand and a woman from Argentina so beside myself there remains a woman from Ontario, Canada and 10 new arrivals from Norway. We had a lovely feast tonight under the grape arbor with amazing food and wine and orange colored olives that were a new experience for me. Everything is so delightful and new. Just how I like it.

I really don't know how much posting I'll do now that I'm here and realize how fast a day goes. One has to be in the kitchen by 9 am for breakfast (for me that means after yoga and journal writing) and then one has to lay in the sun and read and then there's lunch again under the grape arbor in the warm sun and then there's the nap and voila! it's time for a beautiful meal, new friends to meet and libations to share. The Norwegians taught me a new word: "skol"! I like my new word.

This is my bedroom-slash-private studio. Please note the light, the space, the austere loveliness of it.

Looking in the opposite direction is my comfortable bed with fluffy white duvet. My room even has two libraries of books; I'm flush with back issues of Art in America and reference books and novels.

The stone farmhouse where we all stay is hundreds of years old so the bathrooms are shared but very private with locking doors and so on so that you feel at ease. 

This is a view of the bottom of the stairs leading from my room (upper floor) to the bath areas (lower level).

This is looking from the bath area back toward that rounded stone wall. Notice the wooden door on the left.

This is what that door looks like up close. Really beautiful, old, wabi-sabi.

These tiny weedlings were in my room when I got here. The place is full of art left behind by former residents. The bases are very light paper of some sort. I am surrounded by the beauty other artists have created and it makes me feel that a nurturing force abides in this place; a vibration that I hope to harmonize with and add to. In the distance I can hear the pealing laughter of the Norwegian ladies and it fills my heart to hear such happiness; like birdsong it is.

Thank you for stopping by. Create beauty where you're planted and I'll try to do the same wherever I go. Get out and see the world if you can. We don't really understand our own culture until we've experienced it at a distance. xo