Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela
Ever since I read about St Bridget of Sweden making a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in the 1300s, I have wanted to experience and discover what such a long walk does to a person. This September, it became a reality. We walked the easier south-to-north route from the Portuguese border up to Compostela.
I like driving a bit fast when it is safe to do that. It is a bit of a thrill. However, on this pilgrimage I found that there is much to be said in favor of slow traveling. There is a story about the explorer Livingstone which goes like this: He was determined to get from A to B, so much that suddenly his native guide sits down and refuses to go further. When Livingstone asked what was the matter, the guide responded: We have been going so fast that I must wait for my soul to catch up with my body.
There is wisdom in that, I discovered. When you move step by step through the hilly landscape, your soul stays with you, and a peace of mind settles on you.
Eventually we arrived in Santiago de Compostela, and I was lucky to find the cathedral dramatically lit by the brilliant sunshine. I immediately knew I would paint that scene.
As usual, I do careful planning of my paintings before I even put the canvas on the easel.
This is a rough plan for the darks and lights -- for the abstract shapes underlying the composition of the painting:
And as you can see in A below, I stuck to the plan, as I started with the underpainting of the shadows:
B shows the first layers of paint on top of the underpainting. It is hard to see when the image is this small, but every area of paint has multiple colors in it. The sky, for example, has blues, violets, greens and warmer yellows.
In this painting I used brushes, and mixed most of the paint on the palette. That was the only way for me to keep track of all the detail in the cathedral -- not that I painted every detail, I merely suggested the larger features.
Finally, I thought I had finished the painting. I let it sit overnight, and the next day I discovered that I had to make a few changes. The lady in the bottom right corner (green arrow below) demanded too much attention. I really wanted here there, as she represented how I felt after a long day's walk: too warm, old, bigger than normal, and needing support, but also with uplifted spirits. I had to put my emotions aside, and think of what was best for the painting, and sadly, she had to go.
Originally, I had planned to include a person sitting on the stairs (the spot by the pink arrow). It didn't look right either, so I fixed that.
Now I had a big blueish empty space in the bottom right corner, and likewise in the upper left quadrant (yellow arrow). I had to change that somehow. First, I thought I might put some birds in the sky, as there are always doves circling cathedrals. But, no. Again, I felt that living birds would direct too much attention where I didn't want it. The most natural thing that would be there, but in reality almost invisible as it is so expected, would be a cloud. Yes, that solved that problem.
Then I checked my edges carefully, added a bit more contrast and colour to the right tower of the cathedral, and was done.
Emotionally, this painting is a summation of the whole pilgrimage. The towers of the cathedral stretch upward toward the heavens, flaming against the sky. The foreground represents the earthlier concerns, and the very good food and well-earned and well-deserved rests we had at restaurants and cafés. The man sitting at the table is speaking in his smartphone. In our smartphones we had maps and instructions for each part of the route. What is highly modern is existing in the midst of millennia old faith, medieval churches and Baroque cathedrals.
