Santiago De Compostela, Spain

If you have seen the film “The Way” with Martin Sheen, you will have at least a passing familiarity with the city of Santiago Compestela. Santiago is an ancient pre-Christian city that in the early Middle Ages became the center for pilgrims walking from the Pyrenees in France some hundreds of miles to the mythical site of the burial of St. James, the apostle. Sant-tiago and the same San- Diego come from the same Latin bastardization of Santa Giacomo or Saint James. Legend has it that St. James was beheaded in Palestine. His body was loaded on to a stone boat and somehow reached the slightly inland Galician city of Santiago. Some anonymous hermit in 813 C.E. followed some star to a field- literally in Latin the “campus stellae”, the field of the star, and found the long buried body of Saint James. The Catholic Church heavily bought into the myth. Thousands of pilgrims made it to the destination. Many were cured, and finally in 1075 C.E., a Romanesque basilica was built.

I shouldn’t say ”finally”.  The basilica was built with many succeeding additions- Renaissance to Baroque architectures combined to form a gorgeous melange- some call the most beautiful cathedral in Spain. And for many centuries pilgrims walked “the way” till it was just a trickle in the nineteenth century. Sometime in the age of disco, it again became a popular thing to walk the walk, then visit the cathedral. Today thousands and thousands of pilgrims arrive each year on their own personal journey to find more meaning in their lives.  Just today we listened to the priest at mass, give blessings to pilgrims from many parts of Spain, Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia- in short from everywhere.  Coming into town on the bus I saw scores of pilgrims in backpacks, camping gear, designer walking regalia taking their final peregrination to the center of town. They lie around the square, talk, smoke, take photos of each other, phone home, smile broadly, sleep, sunbathe, and collapse. I am not sure how bicyclist fit into the picture, but there are many in matching designer garb also photographing each other proudly.

Santiago is located in West of Spain. I am not sure that west is the proper designation, the country has a slight tilt on the map. It is the little square of land just above Portugal. Let it be said that this part of Spain is called Galicia, famous for the Galls (savages who ravaged Europe), the Gails (a people who migrated from central Anatolia – or Turkey), or the Gales, a Gallic people, who eventually crossed the sea to settle in parts of Britain and Ireland.  We are getting into dicey territory here. Being of Irish descent, I have a romantic view of Galician culture, a proud and vibrant group who peopled this part of Spain, Ireland, Wales, Brittany and Scotland. Indeed DNA research has confirmed that there is a real connection between the people of Ireland and this part of Spain. The music certainly has some common roots (more of that later).  Yet in the histories of conquering peoples over time, many languages die and that is certainly the history of Gallic in this part of Spain. They do have their own language and it is called Gallego. It is very close to Portuguese, a very Latin language and much closer to Spanish than Gallic.

So, why am I here? For many years our family visited Lark in the Morning Music Camp, held in the Mendocino Woodlands just outside of the town of Mendocino in Northern California. There we were introduced to many kinds of music. Among those, my wife took a particular interest in gaita, the Spanish bagpipe.  At the same time she made friends with some wonderful musicians from this part of Spain who taught at the camp.  After a couple of days on my own, we have assembled together as a family to enjoy the gifts from this part of Spain. We are fortunate, through our connections to have a lovely flat near town. Myself, wife, sister-in-law, father-in-law, son, and son’s girlfriend have assembled here.

London- Day 2

I started out my day trying to retrieve my friend, Lamberto's message from Facebook. His son, Ricardo is in London and I was going to call him. I could not find it. Is it me or is it Facebook. It's Facebook. I sent him a message.

I walked first to the London Bridge train station to check where I would go tomorrow. At least at this moment I know where to buy a ticket to Gatwick Airport. I then proceeded to "Get lost" in Susex, south of the Themes and then Lambert borough. That took the two hours I needed before the opening of the Tate Britain (the old Tate). I came to see the Turner collection. I carefully looked at about 300 of his paintings and have concluded that in his abstracts he used a rag to get many of his effects. Yes, I said abstracts. I look at him as the first abstract expressionist painter. (You should know by know, if you are reading my blog, I like to write about art).  I took 106 photos of his pieces, and he certainly was capable of realism, but I am sure that many of his pieces he made up on the spot. I will provide one example here.

I also had the ambitious plan to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum, but before that I stopped in on a live butterfly exhibit at the Natural History Museum and took 78 photos of butterflies. The Victoria and Albert was fun, but not as I remember it 30 years ago. I remember more inventions and mechanical devices. What I saw was a great Medieval collection, some amazing Muslim art, iron work and massive numbers of sculptures.

Excuse me, but I must cut short this blog. I must get up at 6 A.M. tomorrow to catch a plane to Spain. I will post a few photos though.

London: Day 1, 2014

My son, Joey, his girlfriend, Morgan and her son Dante came by the house at about 8:30 A.M. to take me to the airport. Joey, Morgan and Dante are visiting LA and San Diego and generouisly agreed to drop me off at the airport.

Donna and her dad had left for Barcelona on Saturday and Donna was already soaking up the sun with her sister on some Barcelona beach. We have figured out how to use an application called Viber to make long distance phone calls cheaply. I have been on the phone with her Dad, but so far I have only successfully texted Donna.


Checking in caught my attention, because an offer for $400 came on the screen, if I would postpone my flight to another time or another day. It was tempting, but I am not that hard up for the cash. It was a sign that the flight was full and eight seats beyond capacity. All 400 sat squeeze nine across, and fortunately at least I had an aisle seat, with a cute old Indian woman in her sari next to me. All would have been well, but she liked the air-conditioning blowing on her head, and I got the residual cold, shivering all the way to London.

The flight was significant for one thing (besides taking me to London).  I watched Penn and Teller's film Tim's Vermeer. I had read David Hockney's book on the Camera Obscura, gotten a camera lucida as a gift from my son and was very interested in the use of mechanical objects to enhance painting realism. Tim had figured out a brilliant way to reproduce tone exactly by way of mirrors.  He also took more than two years to rebuild Vermeer Room, which I thought a little eccentric. Nevertheless the patience that he took for more than 280 days to reproduce that painting was admirable. It also gave me a real appreciation of what Vermeer did as an artist. I know that he struggled financially, and only produced a small number of brilliant piece during his life. This film really really shows how only long and tedious work, as well as a certain technical brilliance, can produce a painting of that quality. I can now see how just one painting by Vermeer could take him more than a year to finish.

Oh London...

Despite an hour flight delay we arrived pretty close to on time about 7:10 A.M. I borded the rush hour tube and headed for my flat near the Tower of London. An hour later I squeezed out of sardine-like
transit vehicle at about 9:30 A.M. I went into a nearby bakery to ask directions. It took the cashier about 20 minutes to find the address- about 2 miles walking. He was nice enough even to print it for me.

Queen Elizabeth Street was a stone's throw from the Tower Bridge. I took a shower, got organized, grabbed my camera and started walking. I logged about 15, 417 steps today. I walked north through the small city of London past the London wall and Finsberry Circus, left on Old Street , Islington, to Charring Cross, then Leicester Square. One of the more interesting sites- for me anyway- was a place that used to be called the "bone hill". That morphed into,  Bunhill, a grave site for over 1000 years with more than 30, 000 bodies buried until they stopped in 1850. I believe that John Dunne is buried there, as well as the founder of the Methodist church, the author of Pilgrim's Progress and many other prominent people. The one noticible thing was that almost every grave was seriously eroded and one could not even read a full inscription from one.

 I grabbed a nice bite to eat in Soho and proceeded back to the flat with a meandering group of tube rides.

I came back to the flat and proceeded to fall asleep on the couch at about 6 P.M. Boy, is my schedule out of whack! Brice woke me at about 10 P.M. when he came in.

The photos below are quite large, so you can zoom in on them for more detail. This is about 10 of about 100 that I took.

One Day Before London

Yes,  on a day I thought could be a normal day, it wasn't. I am still packing my bag after one week of packing. In the competition for bag weight I lose. I do not have so many clothes, but I am bringing my mini laptop, 2 cameras, adapters, guide books, batteries,  drawing supplies, and plenty of miscellaneous.

I confirmed some flights, called Barcelona on Viber, uploaded a few new applications, placed an ad on Craigslist, repacked again... I did laundry. I paid some bills and walked down to Fircrest Market mail them.

I was exhausted an actually got in an hour nap.

I gave our house sitter, Claudia, a tour (of duty) for the next two weeks. I made here dinner out of gratitude. I watched the Giants lose third game in a row.  I took care of many details.

Now I will find a random detail that will  encapsulate my experience of the day, at.least by way.of metaphor.

Art at the Source 2104

The results are in. Over four days and two weekends approximately 270 people visited our studios. Michael Ecton, photographer, was my guest artist and I think that we made good pair. I will just give him a little plug: http://www.winecountryphoto.com/

I have been leaving the glass off my pieces, because texture is so important to me. I have been trying to get good photos of my work and even asked a friend to come in and photograph. Nevertheless the best photos that I got were about two weeks ago on an overcast day.

I spent all day trying to make a revision of my website. I was behind in my dues, and now I am trying to link the site, so that my old site is eliminated and my new site comes up when edlynchartist.com is pressed. It had not worked. Still I have a free domain name, and readers can check the new design there. It is much simpler with better photos of the paintings. www.edlynch.net

I will show you the photo in the catalog. The Pope's Seal of Approval. I loved it when people laughed as they read the title. I received a remarkable number of positive comments- even more than that- the comments were over the top complementary.

Harvey's Portrait Show

I feel that it has been so long since I have published here. I been part of a great show in Santa Rosa organized by Harvey Mandlestein. He took a couple hundred beautiful portraits. Then he made prints and asked artists all over Sonoma County to do do portraits of his portraits. The results were astonishing. The opening about two weeks ago was a great part as well. Go to sonomacoastart.com to find out more.

I'm Back

I have been working to get a new body of work for this year's Art at the Source. My largest work to date is about 4 feet by 2 feet each- diptych. I have used that small diptych as a model. It has taken me quite a bit of time and close to done but not completely satisfied. I will post it after I actually take a photo.