The Healer’s Healing Garden in SpainA Photo of a Garden Reminiscent of the Healing Garden in Spain
I just saw a beautiful garden photo on Facebook and it reminded me of friends of my daughter in Spain who have the most Beautiful Garden! The husband used to be a brick mason and now he is in the Healing Arts. He practices Craniosacral therapy and also massage techniques to help with physical and emotional health. His wife is a lovely calm woman too. She seems to be a healer in vibration. I have been to their garden several times and have enjoyed the garden immensely when Anushka was a baby and later with Mikaela, her younger sister. The husband is always gardening when he is not working. He has no outside help. He does all the work and in my opinion the garden looks like Monet’s garden outside of Paris, Giverny. One can even see a factory from the garden but when you are in this lovely garden you are entranced by its beauty and the industry in the background disappears. The wife has brought me tea and/or cafe con leches and an assortment of homemade goodies while I waited with the baby in the garden. The lady of the house is also an artist and when one is inside their beautiful eclectic home, unless you pinch yourself you might think you were in Santa Fe, New Mexico rather than northern Spain!
Being in this healing paradise for an hour or two at a time with one of my grand babies I always feel an urge to paint! If the grand baby was awake I would drink in the moment and enjoy watching the child look with wide eyes at nature around her. When one of the babies was napping I would sometimes take out colored pencils and draw what I was experiencing visually. But many times I sat with a huge smile fixed on my face drinking in the magnificence of nature directed by man.
These luscious moments of life where we are truly in the moment are treasures that we can draw on through our lives.
I am thankful for beauty where I find it; in people in experiences in tragedy in beauty and ultimately in love.
Here’s to having experiences that we look back on as ahhhh moments!
Bye for now,
Francesca
Painting that Francesca painted from thoughts of Spain www.francescafilanc.com
My mother, Pat Welsh, realized I had an aptitude for art at a very young age. Gallery of my current work. In the summertime she taught painting to some of my friends, my sister and me. Mother would encourage me to paint on warm summer afternoons when we were tired of playing imagination games or had had enough beach time for that particular day. I recall so vividly painting in the afternoon after lunch as I matured into adolescence.
To this day I actually remember the upwelling of joy I felt when painting some particular paintings at ages six to eleven years old. My Mom thought them special herself and saved these paintings, having them framed for my oldest daughter Yvette when she born.
Long before I vacationed with my husband and children on the Snake River in Wyoming I recollect painting a scene depicting two Indian men with their canoe. One Indian was leaning into the canoe, the other Indian to the side with a thick forest in the background. I took hours to paint this painting in watercolors. I really felt the Indians getting ready to take the canoe out onto the water. Possibly the games I had played as a very young girl influenced my deep emotion in painting this scene. I loved playing imagination games and I believe my mother encouraged us to play outdoors.
Indians was one of my favorite games. I was a squaw princess and my name was Falling Waters. I have no idea where I got that idea! But I loved the name and no other child could borrow the name, Not Even for one day of play.A little bossy I would say! In those days we had a huge area of Eucalyptus and Monterey Cypress trees growing out of sandy soil. It was a great place to play Indians! We also had an area on our property that had solid clay, which enabled us to have fun making clay pots and cups like the Indians did back in the day!
Playing Indians
We were a neighborhood of girls and we all played together. There were at least seven or eight, Barbie, Katherine, Patty, Annette, Mija, Tina, my sister Wendy and me. There were actually more girls, but they were older than we. They played with us in a more in charge role like being mothers’ helpers. We adored these older girls, Joan, Trudy, and Chris.
On some occasions I remember playing at a friend’s house observing wide-eyed while the older sister got ready for a date, dreaming about the day that I would go to a dance all dressed up in a beautiful shiny dress having been given a corsage by a boy!
Painting is something I have enjoyed doing my whole life thanks to my mother’s encouragement to paint! As an abstract artist I paint my thoughts and feelings.
Here’s to lazy Summers Swimming Painting Gardening sipping Ice tea in beautiful environments!
The 4th of July is just around the corner and I am reminded of summer days growing up in a sleepy little beach town in southern California, Del Mar. Not so sleepy now, but back then it actually was, despite the fact that it was a Mecca for the movie stars.
Stay tuned for more in my Blog on Movie Stars and Del Mar California once the racing season beginsin a couple of weeks. In the mean time, here is a true story about lazy Summer Days Growing up in Del Mar.
My parents had a 4th of July party every year. My father was a lawyer in Los Angeles. Daddy commuted by train, leaving from the train station on Monday morning and arriving home on Friday night. Orange County was considerably far away to drive in those days. Back in the day, home fireworks were legal. They were illegal to buy in San Diego and maybe in Los Angeles too, but in Orange county fireworks were sold. I remember vividly Daddy driving to Orange County a week or two before the fourth of July to buy fireworks for our party. The excitement my sister Wendy and I felt was palpable! With anticipated glee Wendy and I counted the days till we would be able to light our fireworks!
It was like Christmas in July when he would come home with all the beautifully wrapped fireworks! Packages labeled with the names: Sparklers, Sky Rockets, Black Snakes, Fountains, Roman Candles. Wendy and I adored the sparklers! It was like shooting stars on a stick. In the night air you could write with them and they twinkled like little stars or fireflies. Being California girls born and raised we did not have fireflies. We did experience them when we traveled to see our grandparents in Pennsylvania.
The morning of the fourth would always start with a swim in the ocean. Oh, how good the water felt! After breakfast Wendy and I and the other girls in the neighborhood would have a parade. I think it must have been one of my mother’s ideas. We dressed up like revolutionary war characters and would march up and down the streets once I started playing the flute. I played I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy and other patriotic songs. Wendy brought up the rear playing the drums.
FIREFLY
The evening festivities started about 5:00 or 6:00. So exciting! Wendy and I got to have our Black Snakes on the driveway! For those of you who are not familiar with these fireworks, after lighting a small tablet, the tablet starts smoking and an ash resembling a snake is created via an intumescent reaction. Then it was all we could do to wait for darkness to fall and light our sparklers.
As much as I loved the 4th of July there was only one part that I dreaded, making it a some what bittersweet experience. Being hugged tightly by the grown-ups! By the 4th, I had had three weeks of ocean and sun. Back in the 1950’s and 60’s they did not have sunscreen except for the hideous white paste, Mercurochrome. So by the 4th of July my back was red as a lobster! My front side would be all freckled and brown but my back would be on fire with sunburn. I would try to tell people please don’t hug me because I am sunburned but everyone was drinking and smoking and my little voice did not get heard. So I would wince when the company arrived and wince when they left! Otherwise, hot dogs, hamburgers, potato chips, watermelon —Yummy. J
Once it was dark the real fun began! Daddy would give us our long anticipated sparklers. After that Daddy would start with the big fireworks.
OOOH AHHHH We would sigh — SOOOO Beautiful!!!!
After we finished our family fireworks show, the whole family walked up the street to the top of the hill to watch the spectacular fireworks from the nearby fairgrounds. It was really dark back then so you saw lots of stars. We had lots of bats in Del Mar and on one occasion a bat flew into my hair and I screamed! We sat up on the vacant lot and waited till 9:00 pm when the fireworks started, oohing and ahing at the colors, all the colors of the rainbow brilliantly lighting up against the inky black background.
Artists’ works are influenced by events and emotions of their lives. Perhaps my subconscious mind took the colors and hues of those remembered fireworks into the artwork that I am producing today.
Happy painting and dreaming… Fireworks in the sky!
“Saturday, in the park, think it was the fourth of July.” Chicago
I come from a long line of writers on both sides of my family. While some research implies talent in families is passed down through the gene pool, equally important are environment, training and opportunities. The environment in which I was nurtured encouraged creativity and artistic expression. In our family we are all artists. My sister is a scientist as well as an artist. Check out my first blog post We Are All Artists.
In my family tree there are writers, actors, architects, designers, gardeners, musicians, and painters.
I was reading an article in Surfer Magazine today about the surfing gene and how families of professional surfers evolve. The author of the article was interviewing families of famous surfers. One statement they all seemed to stand behind is the fact that their children had been exposed to the best surfing from the time they were born. And practically before they could walk they were taken out into the water with their famous surfing parents.
My niece Rebecca has a childhood friend whose family is full of famous baseball players. It seems to make sense that we are born into families where we can excel in the family business.
I love to write because it is so creative. The same energy I experience when putting paint to canvas is present when I write. In the beginning everything was written longhand. Imagine my delight when I learned to use computers. Now writing is effortless and even more of a joy.
A couple of years ago I went to the mountains by myself for a long weekend with my standard poodle Amie. When I got home I sat down with my laptop and just wrote and wrote. I felt like I was with my best friend. If there really are angels like my granddaughter Anushka says, andwhich I tend to agree with, maybe they are right there with us while we write (Check out my blog about my granddaughters). I believe we are never alone. The idea that our spiritual guides, angels, God are always with us continually is such a comforting thought.
Think of all the authors who have said, I don’t know where a story is going to take me when I sit down to the computer – the story unfolds, the characters tell me who they are and at times the story starts writing itself. In this way my art takes the same form. I’ll start a painting in one way yet it totally changes before it is done.
I am at times beginning to feel swept away with my friends or friend as I sit here and type away. Many times I can’t type fast enough for the thoughts that flood into my heart and mind. Writing is like painting because it is fluid and alive. I love this quote of Maya Angelou’s . . .
A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
Painting as well as other disciplines needs enlightenment and inspiration for the artist to make the opportunity to paint an inspired piece of art. It is paramount for an artist to view paintings in museums. Many artists, some who paint abstract and some who are traditionalists inspire me which can be seen through my art.
The last few days I was in Spain visiting my daughter and her family, we traveled from their home in the town of Izcue by bus to Pamplona and then by train to Madrid.
We stayed in a hotel that I would highly recommend. The prices were good. It was clean and lovely located in a residential neighborhood on a tree-lined street. AC Hotel Carlton Madrid Paseo de las Delicas 26 28045 Madrid. The hotel is in walking distance to all the museums and just down the street from the train station. Which by the by has a restaurant and a beautiful garden. The hotel seems to cater to the businessperson as well as the vacationer. There is a sumptuous buffet breakfast with everything from smoked salmon to deserts. After stuffing ourselves on the delicious repast we were ready to walk it off with plenty of museum viewing!
I was thrilled to learn that we were in time to see the Marc Chagall exhibit at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Chagall’s art is childlike yet sophisticated. He paints cows, roosters, goats and lovers in the sky. Chagall was a colorist and he painted his feelings.
I relate to Chagall because I am also a colorist and I paint my feelings.
We walked to three museums that day including the Prado. We looked at works by Diego Velazquez, larger than life paintings, some looking to be ten stories high. The majority of people were clustered around Las Meninas. Las Meninas is famous in part because Velazquez painted himself in the painting. One painting in particular that I was especially attracted to depicted a magnificent white horse with flowing mane, snorting the air, high-spirited with a regal-looking man on his back. There were many such paintings with a similar theme. Velazquez is a national treasure of Spain. When you go to the Prado you see a multitude of his works.
My son-in-law Iban and I visited Guernica by Picasso, depicting the massacre in a small Basque town during the time of Franco. They are working on refurbishing the painting at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía but it was still on display. It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italianwarplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on April 26th, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.
On my last night in Madrid we walked to dinner a few blocks away from our hotel. We sat on the street, drank good wine and had a culinary delight of several courses of tapas that my daughter took great delight in ordering for the table. We started with calamari and white asparagus, the dishes kept coming including lamb and ending with traditional deserts.
Mikaela had fallen asleep in the stroller next to our table and Anushka stayed awake until we returned back to our lovely hotel. I asked for a cab to pick me up in the morning to take me to the airport. Yvette, Iban, Anushka and Mikaela enjoyed the day in Madrid and then walked to the train that took them back to Izcue, and yours truly traveled home to California. What a lovely memory of my last two days in Spain.
Many things motivate me to paint. I paint because it brings me joy to create attractive works of art. Painting is fun and keeps me balanced. It is a way for me to self-sooth. Many people exercise to center themselves. Painting does that for me.
Painting is a space where I can work out emotional situations and at the same time create something beautiful. I’ve heard it described as “releasing the unconscious by means of spontaneous art expression.” (Dr. Margaret Naumberg.)
Do you remember finger painting in kindergarten? Remember the roll of butcher paper the teacher would bring out and tear off a big piece? Then she would come around and put a dollop of liquid starch on the paper. The colors would be put out and how delicious the feeling to start sliding ones fingers through the paint and starch, mixing colors. I remember making lots of green with yellow and blue. Remember how the colors would end up muddy brown and gray when you would add orange or red? For me it would be so frustrating! But I eventually learned to mix the colors and was inspired in doing so.
Every day when I go out into my studio it takes me back to that magical place and time when I was finger painting in kindergarten.
