Toulouse Writings: Reflections on the last few months

Toulouse Writings.

Of my experience thus far in Toulouse I would say that it’s been one of the best and most difficult things I’ve ever done. I suppose partly the short level of time only about 4 months, means that it is quite a lot more intense than for people away for a whole year. A friend in Montpellier told me he settled down after about the first three months! ‘Three months!’ I thought! ‘I don’t have three months!’ But even so perhaps it’s taken that long.

Being away from home is a pleasurable mix of the exotic and the little successes that occur day to day like feeling a bit more accepted by French peers, managing to communicate in a café, realising that you have grown to know a new place. It is also quite hard. I have always wanted to travel and had never accounted for quite how much I would miss home, and it wasn’t always the obvious things. Often it was a TV program that reminded me of the uniquely British sense of humour, an audiotape of Bill Bryson reminded me of the delight with which the British people partake in eating things like teacakes and savouring hot cups of tea. Living in London I have definitely missed the buzz of a big city, the diversity of cultures and consequently the diversity of the food! This all seemed to take on a strange sense of romance from abroad. I missed home in a way that I never knew I would. At one point I even missed rainy April mornings and grey cloud filled skies.

At the same time the thought to be living in France really thrilled me. I would feel so happy walking to the boulangerie on a Saturday morning to buy a croissant and a baguette. I felt so…French! In France they queue out of the door at a boulangerie on a Sunday, piling out with an average of three baguettes bundled together and cradled in their arms. They have to do this before all the shops shut for the afternoon. The risk of running out of bread before the shops reopen on Monday morning is clearly not worth contemplating!

The French are very proud of their food. I didn’t realise quite how proud. Proud to the extent that it is ok to openly mock our food. An advert for McVities digestives runs with the tagline “C’est Anglais, mais c’est bon!” “It’s English, but it’s good!” Saying that, they have reason to be so. Their markets are fantastic, so lively and the store holders so friendly; it has been a great pleasure to visit them. The cafes are also amazing. In France it is quite normal I think to spend several hours in a café just sipping a cup of coffee and watching the world pass by.

In another country we tend to regard everything I think with an air of slight bemusement. The French do the same to us and I think it’s necessary to have a sense of humour when relocating (even temporarily to another country). At first I didn’t quite realise this, I think it took a while to realise that it was ok to not quite “get” everything, to not love every aspect of a country, but to enjoy it’ positives and try not to get too hung up on its flaws.

On the day of the royal wedding I turned on the television to find that it was on three different channels. When I later said this to my landlord who found it all quite funny, she said that it was, because a lot of British people live in France. I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced. The French are quite intrigued by our “set-up”. They didn’t want a royal family but I think they remain fascinated by the fact that we still have ours. I loved listening to the French commentary. They were so excited about it. I felt oddly patriotic, not something that occurs often. I suppose it must have seemed such a hullaballoo for just two people but I think how old-fashioned it was arguably, just added to the grandeur and excitement of watching it. I think I enjoyed watching it in France far more than I would have done in England. I heard some of the English coverage was a bit serious whereas the French coverage was just really fun and entertaining. It gave me a great insight into what the French think about our culture in Britain.

I have two flatmates here, one is Georgie who is English too and comes from Clapham. She is a French student on her year abroad. The other is a German Erasmus student called Pia. We talk always in a mix of French and English. Pia speaks both well and I’m envious that I cannot speak German to the same standard. In the end my group of close friends comprises of all German students, apart from Georgie. All the other Erasmus students at the école where I have been studying are German and I was the only English one. Strange when I know this is far from being the case at other universities here in Toulouse. At first this was a bit lonely but ultimately it’s been great. Speaking two different languages as a first language we speak mostly in French, as it is the “middle ground”. Speaking French with other “étrangères” is great because it is a much slower pace than when you talk to French people who just speak so fast without even realising it. We can be more understanding with each other and we can help each other when we get stuck. I also found that I liked and revelled in the fact that they weren’t English. I have so much enjoyed hearing about their lives in Germany, what they missed (notably the very dark, heavy German bread), and what they thought about England. I realised that I had preconceptions about Germans that I had to throw out the window because they didn’t fit, and of course why would they? You definitely can’t define a whole country on outmoded ideas. It was interesting to hear about how they felt about being German, being proud to be German on the one hand, being part of the first generation who were far enough removed from a turbulent past to be able to say that, but also feeling embarrassed when they heard German tourists in the streets.

I have made some French friends here but it was harder. When you are all Erasmus students you are all in the same boat, you already have something in common. It was harder work trying to infiltrate French cliques within the school; you had to make a lot of effort. With some the effort continues, with others it is really lovely. It is often the ones who have come from other places themselves, who remember the feeling of not knowing anyone who are the kindest but not exclusively. One student who I met on the first day still greets me with a big smile every time I see him. He makes art to help him go to wild places and live out amongst nature. Another student makes comic books and often tries to talk to us in English or German albeit with a strong French accent. He performs too and plays banjo, he offered to help teach me how to play “Boys don’t cry” on the ukulele but regretfully I didn’t follow it up. He has a habit of disappearing for weeks and then reappearing as if from nowhere.

I found it much easier making friends with the French guys, “les mecs” than the girls, “les filles”. They seemed more immediately open and welcoming. I’m not sure how this would have changed had we been guys. Not very much I suspect. We have a polish friend who barely speaks French and yet he has still managed to bond with a small group of “mecs”, who speak English with him. We found them one lunchtime, in the studio only about 12 o’clock, already drinking wine and beer and smoking cigarettes. Everyone smokes in France. I think there are only a couple of students in the year who don’t smoke. Even the teachers do, the most “détendu” even lighting up in the studio during the lesson that they are teaching. The fire alarm goes off a lot when people smoke with the windows closed. This didn’t bother me as much as I thought it might but the cigarette butts that remain, littering the studio did.

I hope what will remain from my time in Toulouse is a desire to continue to explore other places and a knowing that I can do more than I think. That I don’t need to spend so much time worrying, as normally things work out. Although I always wanted to do an exchange like this I never really believed I was capable of it. It has been really hard but also rewarding. I’m currently reading a book in French, albeit quite simple, I wasn’t able to understand it before I left and now I’m up to page 130 after only about 4 days! It’s sometimes little triumphs like that that make you realise it’s all been worthwhile. It sounds ridiculous perhaps but it’s true. I think it’s about becoming aware of what you are capable of. It felt a bit like moving to London for the first time but more extreme! I think all over again it made me realise that I could look after myself, that I could be quite independent and that even when feeling shy I could meet new people and on top of this that I could hold conversations in another other language. I told this to a friend when I was back in London recently and he replied “make sure you don’t lose that”.

I’ve experienced a whole other culture and way of life here. There were days when I’d think I hadn’t done much but each day brought new experiences and even going to cafes and super markets was so different. One thing I did find was that wherever you go there will always be some nice people; I hope I’m right in saying this. I think you don’t appreciate how kind and patient strangers can be until you travel. From the first day I experienced this. On the train the man sat next to me noticing I was writing in English asked me what it was for and like that we started talking. We spent the next few hours in conversation and drinking my first taste of French rosé at the bar. I even sent him a postcard once I arrived. The weekend that followed, sat on my own outside a restaurant, I got chatting to a Mexican girl at the next table who was on a year abroad studying architecture in Paris, she had come to Toulouse to travel a bit and again conversation ensued-despite many difficulties in remembering my A level French.

Since then I’ve met many other really genuinely lovely, engaging and encouraging people, in school, on trains-quite frequently, at markets and in restaurants. I’ve also met many not so nice people, but for every not so nice person I’ve definitely met someone else who balances them out! It has also made me realise how hard it must be for foreigners in London, it must seem really confusing. I have decided that instead of getting cross with them for being slow or taking up too much pavement that I’ll try to remember how nice people were to me here in Toulouse and be equally nice to them. There is no rush in Toulouse so people do have time to talk, to be patient, we should probably do more of that in London, I think it makes a difference.  I also have a new respect for my foreign friends who choose to spend three or four whole years studying abroad in England, in hindsight they made it look easy, even if they didn’t always feel like that.

Writing this has made me realise how glad I am to have done this exchange, good and bad it’s been like nothing I’ve ever done before. While I’m really looking forward to returning to London for good in 4 weeks, maybe I will feel a bit nostalgic for my time here in France. It’s a different way of life. I also can’t wait to show my new friends London and I hope to be able to visit them in Germany.

L'X-Factor

Within the last two weeks I've become really addicted to French X-Factor. I know it's a bit shameful but I have three very good reasons. Number one: It's so much better/nicer than the English one. There is no mean ritual humiliation and the judges are nice! (sometimes annoyingly so-but I prefer it). Number two: It helps my French. There isn't much that's good on French tv but if you can find something light like this it helps so much, but equally isn't too intellectually challenging. (French master chef is also worth a watch!) Number three: my flatmate Georgie knows one of the contestants and yesterday he went through to the final five! He was in Toulouse on Erasmus last Autumn, a language student on his year abroad. When French X-factor came to town he decided to give it a try, he'd already tried for the English version but not got that far. However now he's in the final stages, he's dropped out of uni for the year but in spite of that it sounds like it's done no harm to his French! Also the French love him! I guess that is quite a unique Erasmus experience and maybe that is really one of the best way to learn French, apply for French X-Factor! Yesterday he sung "Single Ladies" by Beyonce. I think he should probably win just for the sparkly sequined suit alone. There were also some other very funny performances yesterday that are probably worth checking out, just to see what French music taste is like! Hmm.....

Mum and Dad came to visit and we went to Carcassonne

 Mum and Dad standing on the bridge which crosses the river separating the old town from the "new town".

 The grassy banks which boarded the path leading up to the walled old town where resplendent with red poppies and other wild flowers.

 View of the new town from the castle, which dominates the old town. There are parts of the rampants that go back to Roman times, around 70bc.

 Speculoos tiramisu! (Speculoos is a type of biscuit very popular here in France, though it is in fact Belgian. I'd never come across it before. It's a cross between maybe a ginger biscuit and a digestive, perhaps. The tiramisu was absolutely delicious, they also sell speculoos paste and speculoos ice cream.)

 I found the new town had it's own beauty, and there were some really interesting buildings that we came across on our way to the old town. (See above and below)

I was fascinated by this building, it seemed a little out of place with the other buildings surrounding it. I had no idea what it was, but I liked how Eastern it looked, beautiful windows, and I liked the palm trees that surrounded it.

A very beautiful mossy roof which made up part of the castle, though probably wasn't there in Roman times!

Lots of people are a bit cynical about Carcassonne, it can, I think be very touristy-in fact it is meant to be the most visited city after Paris! But I really like it. I guess I'm lucky enough to have caught it just out of season. The views across the landscape are fantastic and I really like the lively but very relaxed ambiance of the place and the architecture of both the old and the new parts of the town.

Also while we were waiting to enter the castle a plane display team closely resembling the red arrows zoomed past overhead! We had hoped they would come back and do an impromptu display but alas they did not. However they created much excitement amongst us and the other English tourists behind us!

Paintings!

 Painting of Jon, which I finally finished a week ago. I have been working on it on and off since my first week here!

Above, a new painting that I have started of a rue near where I live. I am fascinated by the light, colours and the whole structure of the streets. It is so banal and yet unfamiliar at the same time. This is one of my biggest paintings I have attempted and I'm not quite sure yet what direction it will take ultimately.

More work...it's been a busy week!

Here are two pieces I have been working on this week.  This first one is a watercolour painting that I actually started almost when I first arrived, but then we had holidays and workshops week and I never quite got it finished. So I decided I would give it a go this week. In some ways I feel I've moved on a bit in my mind now but I'd also really like to try and finish it. I started it when I was still feeling quite homesick for London so it is a painting of Jon in our London flat. My "reasoning" I gave myself was that it would be interesting to make a painting of the flat from afar. It is also a study of the light, I noticed immediately when I arrived how different the light is here to London. It is much stronger, golden almost. That is not to say that the light in London is not beautiful, indeed in the photo I am working from it is a very soft cool lemon yellow colour, here in Toulouse, it is maybe a less bashful sunlight, more forceful and all illuminating. The painting is watercolour on unprimed canvas. Unfortunately this isn't working as well as on unprimed linen. The paint doesn't saturate the canvas like it does with the linen, and leaving it unstretched has made the material buckle somewhat which is a shame. I am finding it more like working with acrylics. I think working on canvas it might actually work better to prime it because although you still don't get the saturation at least you get some very interesting uncontrollable reactions between the primer and the paint where the thickness of the primer varies.

Below is the second large A0 ink drawing that I've made this week. I wasn't sure about it when I first started, it was a less immediate picture for me than my first attempt but I was ultimately pleased with it. I think I would potentially like to try working even bigger, to see how far I could take it, and see how again the change in scale would effect the impact of the image.

 I seem to have managed to have about three "tutorial" type things in the last four days now! Which was a very pleasant surprise. Well the most recent one was a meeting with the philosophy teacher here when she making her way around the studios to see our work. I actually had a really nice chat with her, she told me that in fact her husband was English and an artist and had done his masters at Chelsea. Talking to her and realising how nice she was sort of guilted me in to going to the philosophy lesson running from 6-8pm. I may have missed it a couple of times after feeling so completely out of my depth the first time I went. I am pleased to say I did manage to understand a bit more this time, we talked about Guy Debord and the Society of the Spectacle-this sounds familiar... Unfortunately I didn't find it that interesting but I will keep trying! I also feel 6 o'clock on a Thursday evening is a terrible time to have a philosophy lecture! But anyway....

I also found to my interest talking to the painting tutor, that there is a student in the 5th year who is really interested in palm trees ("les palmiers") and is even (if I've understood this correctly) making portraits of them. So I intend to seek him out as soon as I can, and as soon as I can work out where the fifth year studios are. There are three floors in the school and you know what year the studios belong to depending on the floor, floor one=year one. So by this logic I have no idea where the fifth years are unless the are on the roof which wouldn't really surprise me! I'm really quite excited about the whole idea of palm trees here, the exoticism of them in the urban environment. I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes me.

French people really do wear berets! (But you have to know where to look)

The fantastic Saturday market held in Place du Capitol-with amazing (organic) food is full of beret wearing French people. I was taking this photo and the stall holder decided to strike a pose for me! Of course the berets could just be for the amusement of us tourists but I like to think they would wear them whether we were here or not!

What I did today... (Eek I wrote a lot, feel free to just look at the pictures!)

Above a drawing that I made on paper about A0 size from the sketch that I have also been using to make the woodcut, below, which I think I have finished now. In my big drawing I tried to maintain some of the manner and looseness of the original sketch, I wanted to see how the scale would change it. I'm quite pleased with the result and I'd like to perhaps do some other large ink drawings based on sketches I make and things I observe and see where this takes me. I am enjoying the motive of suburban houses interspersed with palm trees, the palm trees make even mundane suburbia seem quite exotic to me, I find them very pleasing.
I had a really helpful chat with the drawing tutor today who is called Guillame. Unfortunately he is going to be working with the 5th years from now on but I'm glad I got the chance to talk to him. In our drawing class I discovered that the ultimate aim is to make a book! This was a little bit of a surprise to me but perhaps it will be a good challenge. I had already been thinking about doing some illustrations for a short story that Jon has written and I am thinking of doing some watercolours about A3 in size in order to do that, I hope they can be quite fluid and the colours bold-though with enough white space, I would then of course photograph/photocopy them and shrink them to book-size juxtaposing them with the text. (though I haven't started this yet) I had another idea which was to make a book just of drawings of the things I have observed which have caught my eye here- "les choses qui m'ont frappé". Sketches here are called "les croquis". So I could do drawings and then transfer them to screen prints to print a series of books maybe. Anyway I showed my sketches to Guillame and he seemed interested. He said he liked the sketch that the drawing above is made from partly because of the space around it, sort of drawing you in and somehow looking quite complete. (whereas with my other sketches I had worked right to the edge of the page which gives a different intensity and makes the space quite different I guess.) He said I should think about having areas of intensity and areas that were quieter by comparison. He also suggested I try working with them to a bigger size to see what would happen. I said that I hadn't really considered the light when I made the small sketches but he said perhaps this wasn't necessary as they are studies of space essentially, so perhaps this is what I should focus on. I felt really encouraged talking to him, I'm not sure exactly what he said but I felt talking to him that there was some potential in mes croquis, I should do more, and I should try to develop them, maybe keeping them quite gestural but also considering contrasts between having areas of high detail/intensity and areas with less detail/more space. I felt quite inspired to work, having arrived at school today towards the end of this lesson that to be honest I didn't know I had and feeling a feeling a bit tired a bit uncertain I suddenly felt v.inspired to work and I did indeed feel quite productive this afternoon. Hopefully it will continue! I have another sheet of paper set up in readiness! 

Group Collaboration-skipping back a bit in time... (week of the 14th March)

First week back after our two week break was workshop week! This turned out to be surprisingly intensive for the first week back, unlike in London where I always feel we ease ourselves and each other back into working mode gradually as the days go by, here it was 9 o'clock start Monday morning and didn't end until 6-6:30-this ended up being the routine for the next four days! However it was good to be feeling productive again. My workshop was based on a group project that I have been invited to get involved in by the tutor who organises it. It consists of the students creating an installation for a space, the installation can be physical and also should involve sound. We spent the first day making drawing and maquettes. The students are interested in the relationship between interior and exterior spaces and perceptions of said spaces. The main concept is monstre/montrer-the is a similarity in the wwords for monster and the word "show" in French. So the exhibition will be based around the idea of something being monstrous I suppose. The students were originally quite interested in the idea of creating a sort of labyrynthe. Here was my maquette I made, I was really thinking about the work of Thomas Hirschhorn that I saw in the Hayward Exhibition: "Walking in My Mind" which I saw a couple of years ago. I thought hte cardboard structure was very effective as a cavernous material, it would also be a cheap and readily available material to use and less of a fire risk than plastics.

I got talking to one of the students, who said this was a good idea and got quite excited about how to construct it, suggesting a wooden frame on which to base the cardboard. However it was starting to sound a bit complicated and I was somewhat relieved when we discussed it and things seemed to be turning towards a different idea which was the making of sculptures out of masking tape. I wasn't sure about this idea at first but the forms began to look quite organic particularly after the had become a bit disheveled after sitting in the studio for a few days. I made some drawings of them incorporating them into the space, we each drew different proposals of how we thought the space could be used. The space itself is a community center and very uninspiring so I think it'll be interesting to see if the artwork is strong enough to overcome that. I would quite like to make some prints based on the work that could be distributed during the show. I need to discuss this idea with the others, but the owner of the space was quite keen on the idea of distributing drawings, she wanted to show the process, however I got the feeling that the group would prefer to keep that separate, however drawings/prints just of the forms, could work. I may make some even if it turns out they won't be distributed. So I spent a lot of time drawing on Monday, Tuesday and Friday morning. The rest of the time I spent in the sound room with a friend who had invited me to help here with the sound piece. She had made recordings of the sea and we were editing it to make a sound piece that when installed could hopefully be sufficiently scary I suppose! I didn't do that much hands on stuff with this but I hope that by giving opinions etc I was of use and it was really interesting to see how you go about mixing sounds, there are layers and I found the program quite similar to that which you use to edit animations (something I tried in my elective last term). I have a better idea of how sound works now, sound is something I never even thought I'd find out about so to have actually learned a bit of the process of editing, cutting and over-layering sounds was really great, and I now know what some (well about 4) of the little knobby bits in recording studios are for! So all in all it was a good week, we are installing it a week today and I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like. I didn't really work on it last week so I need to make sure I try to help bring everything together a bit this week. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turn out.

An example of a proposed masking tape sculpture, the sculptures are most dramatic when placed in front of the windows, the light highlights their structure.

Above, examples of other initial ideas.

Recent works...

Above are recent works, that I have made in my sketch book mainly using a trusty berol fine liner although there is one in pencil-this one took me ages, it's not really finished, I hope I can bring it to a point of being finished, I was sketching it in a cafe and exhausted myself with detail-you can prob tell where I started and where I finished. The top two are sketches I did whilst sitting by the Garonne after a picnic lunch in the sunshine, I sat with my ersamus friends, i like working with other people around me. The others are sketches made on my road-avenue de lavaur. I really like the palm tress which intersperse the concrete of the suburban houses. I also like the telegraph wires that criss cross the streets-I find them oddly quite beautiful-though so far haven't quite worked out how best to depict them. I hope to use these studies to make other works. Perhaps even just to do bigger ink drawings from them, as I find the ink quite effective. The piece at the bottom is a woodcut that I have started based on the drawing on the right of it. I like the palm tree, I think this will end up being quite a detailed woodcut but I am tempted to make another perhaps just very simple because I really like the looseness of the lines of the palm tree on the left which is something I didn't think about atall when I made them, infact I was thinking of working into them a lot more. Also I think the looseness of my original drawings is perhaps something I should think about a bit. I think sometimes you think you know how to do something like a woodcut but while all the cross hatching and detailing is good it isn't always necesary. Last term in my paintings I tried to work on reducing the details so that I only included what was esential and thought carefully about the amount of detail that was required for a set piece. I have always thought that prints require a lot of detail but I realised that this isn't always necessary either. So I will finish this one but I will perhaps do another of the same image where I reduce the detail and I will try to see what works best. I guess I don't want it to lose the expressiveness of the original study, although the study isn't perfect there is something pleasing about it.

Impressions of Montpellier

Drawing from memory based on the streets of Montpellier.

To round off mes vacances (my holidays), I visited Montpellier on Friday and stayed until Saturday evening. It is a beautiful town with huge elegant facades, grand old buildings, cream and crumbling slightly so that it has a slight air of faded glamour. Palm trees line the streets. (I cannot get over the abundance of palm trees in the south of France, it feels so exotic and makes me think of Hockney's los-angelesian palms). The buildings give the appearance of being much bigger and taller than ours in Toulouse, and the streets seem wider, making Toulouse seem almost quite small and quaint by comparison. The difference in colours struck me too, between the pinks and oranges of Toulousian buildings to the creams and whites in Montpellier. It had the air of an old seaside town almost but with steep winding cobbled streets.

Unfortunately the weather was grey and rainy while I was there but I felt that it was a testament to Montpellier that its charm still shone through. Because of the weather I sampled several cafes and drank wine on a small quiet square outside in the evening. There were many little squares like this, in amongst the cafes and the beautiful churches-which weren't too over the top, in comparison to a lot of french churchery. I spent Saturday in a cafe in the morning where I had un chocolat viennois and ate a pain au chocolat and in the musee fabree, the big art museum in Montpellier. My favourite section was the most modern, dedicated to works from the Impressionist era onwards. I was really surprised and happy to find myself face to face with "Bonjour Monsieur Courbet"/the meeting by Gustave Courbet and I also saw some other fantastic works by Monet, Jacques-Emile Blanche and again to my happiness Berthe Morisot-the only female French impressionist-there is a lot of subtlety and a real delicate handling of light in her work. Perhaps my favourite work was by an artist who I didn't know called Cottell called "Voiliers pres de la cote", I think, it was a grey landsdcape looking out to sea, quite modernist in the handling of the paint. Recently I am finding myself drawn to slightly rugged landscapes and images of wild seas, it seems quite an English idea and nostalgic almost but also like the shipping forecast it is comforting to think about a rough sea from afar whilst safe and in the warmth.

My time in Montpellier passed very quickly, I hope I can return when the Sun is shining and perhaps even make a trip down to the seaside.

I saw several examples of really incredible realistic trompe d'oeil paintings on the side of buildings.

This was actually a flat wall!

Rainy day rooftops.

Recent small paintings and sketches

Water colour study of the view from the bottom of the driveway de la maison ou j'habite.

View from the river banks at sunset, Carcassonne. (started on sight, finished from memory)

The sky over Carcassonne

Studies and life drawings made at the Toulouse Lautrec Museum In Albi

 

Photographs of my surroundings

Above is a series of photographs that I took around the suburban streets where I live here in Toulouse. I took them all with a film camera "un appareil photo argentique" as opposed to "numerique" (digital) and for the first time I learnt the process of developing the film by hand myself and then procurring photos from the film, which is called "le tirage". Not an easy process when being taught in English and made even more challenging when being taught to you in French. The teacher is fairly patient, but he has had a rant about how "my generation" doesn't know how to use cameras, everything is automatic, he felt the need to teach me how to hold my camera, useful albeit a bit patronising! He is also very exacting about your techniques and the results, he said that a lot of my photos were a bit over developped or lacking in contrast, though personally I think the imperfections can be interesting beautiful even, though I will not say this to him. Also i suppose the point is learning how to develop "good photos" and then I can use that knowledge as I choose (theoretically!)

In these photos I really hoped to get a sense of the sunlight falling on the roads and buildings and the shadows created as a result. I took these photos as I wanted to reflect my daily routine here, what I see on a daily basis, on my way to the metro or the boulangerie, and how it is both quite exotic and beautiful for me and yet possibly quite banal to the local people who live here.

When not being told off for making mistakes I actually quite enjoyed the process of developing my own photos, though I think I will need to acquire a degree more patience, there is A LOT of trial and error involved! What I do miss in these photos is the colour, I had a discussion with one of the tutors here about my interest in light and how you can infact evoke light without the use of colour, yet the colours are so brilliant here, so different, browns, oranges, sandy yellows, a little more intense than the colours of home. I think this is where my painting will come in. I hope I can express the colours through my paintings, I also had a thought that it might be quite interesting to make a water colour painting from a black and white photo, as then the colour part would be primarily based on my memory and my experience of the colours here, rather than trying to translate the often slightly off colours from a photograph. I have thought a bit about painting from life, it is not something I am very used to, I think working from photos can sometimes seem safer, but perhaps it is something I will try during my time here. Particularly once it gets a bit warmer.