Printmaking Courses in Spain

Soon after arriving in our village–this was 40 years ago–Mike and I took the kids, then eight and ten, on a picnic on the mountainside above the neighboring village of Guéjar Sierra. This was at a period in our lives when everything was new and uncertain. While Mike made a fire to roast some pork chops I got out my sketch pad and began to draw the scene below. There was one isolated stone cottage sitting there.  This used to be very common in the Spanish landscapes at that time.

Before the pork chops were done a new element introduced itself into my placid landscape. A boiling pillar of ominous dark clouds came tumbling down the valley from high in Sierra Nevada. It was beautiful but it was also frightening. I had just time to complete a rough sketch before we picked up the unfinished picnic and scrambled down the hill to the bus, getting thoroughly soaked on the way. That storm didn’t last long, and it was followed by that heavenly mountain light which was to become so familiar to us over the years.

The next day I started painting an elongated vertical oil painting which I called “Storm” / “Tormenta.” In later years it occurred to me that storm and its aftermath was a nice metaphor for the life in Spain upon which we were embarking. In 1979 I did this etched versión of the scene on a zinc plate when I was still in The Rodriguez Acosta Foundation.  Mike laughingly calls it my “Giacomettish print.”

The lines were etched first onto a zinc plate.  Then I added aquatint
along with lithographic ink diluted in water to get the different tones. 
This was one of the last prints I made when I was working in the Fundación
Rodríguez-Acosta in Granada at the end of the 70’s.  I used a mixture
of black, yellow and a touch of  red inks, which gives the classic etchings
color which the Spanish call “bistre oscuro.”