Catalonia fascinates me. I’ve had two artist residencies in the region: two weeks at Centre d’Art i Natura in the tiny village of Farrera in the Catalan Pyrenees in 2008, and three months at Centre d’Art La Rectoria in Sant Pere de Vilamajor, twenty five miles north of Barcelona on the edge of Montseny Natural Park in 2011. I drew striking landscapes at both places. And, during the residencies I became intrigued by all things Romanesque. My stay at La Rectoria gave me the opportunity to draw Romanesque sculpture in the region’s museums, including the famous National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona, and to visit Romanesque churches—Some, in the park, were “ermitas,” tiny chapels, now surrounded by forest.

The work shown here is from the solo exhibition Ritmos en Catalunya I had at the end of my residency at La Rectoria. The medium of the work is experimental black and white photocopy on acid free paper. To my delight, for my residency the art center provided me an office Oce photocopier to use in my studio. After I returned home to Idaho, I created the mural size piece given the same name shown toward the end of this section with “extra” photocopies I mailed home.

Short visits back to Catalonia in 2014 and 2018 have kept the region vivid in my mind. In the Dances With History part of this website in the Catalonia subsection you will find a set of archival digital prints made in the spring of 2019 that mix imagery from my various stays in the region.