El Día de Reyes Magos

As I kneel on the stripy rug in our sitting room individually wrapping our 1930s glass baubles, I am reminded of a former time when I used to wrap 18th century minerals in museum in a similar way. Funny how life can randomly take you to places without you having to move an inch. I look at the gridded cardboard box which is filled to the brim with a mixture of kitchen roll and tissue paper. Each poorly scrunched up ball of white revealing a glimmer of jewel like bauble.  "Beautiful" I say to myself, like I do every year and I remind myself that next year I will take a picture of them in their box. 2016's Christmas will no doubt come and I'll probably forget again. There is always this sense of urgency when it comes to the Christmas decorations for me. I am either desperate to get them on the tree or desperate to file them away and get on with life by the time twelfth night arrives. 

We drove to Fornes this afternoon in a car full of my mothers pots - its time for the first firing for her latest collection which will be on show in London this April. Strapped in the back I had some plates, my mum had the big beetle jar, Andrew was driving. We cruised through the mountains and farms under a bruised sky. It kept changing colour, from yellow to peach to blue to purple and the fields below seemed to reflect the marbling back. I felt like I was privy to a secret conversation between the land and the sky. The olive trees have changed shape - their branches now sag with their heavy loads of fruit and no longer search for the sky with so much passion. Their leaves shone silver against a blackened sky and at their roots the soil had turned into embers of burnt sienna. Yellow fields of feathery asparagus glowed in the random shards of sunlight that escaped the inky air like amber. It was certainly a feast for the eyes. 

Mum's Beetle Jar - a work in progress.
Work by Kitty Shepherd, Facebook page here.

The landscape here in Spain has changed over the past seven days, changing from anaemic yellow to lush green after three days of much needed rain. It really is a welcome break from the never ending sunshine for the farmers and at last the mountain is dusted in icing sugar like the pale pink flowers which are now erupting from the dark skeletons of Almond trees. Being in the campo today was dramatic, romantic and deeply nourishing.

So my back is still not great and I cannot for the life of me work out quite what I have done, but I think it is a combination of carrying too much luggage when in London last October (as its been bad since then), raking too vigorously in November and painting, (but the latter hasn't caused it, just prevented it from healing). So work has slowed down quite a bit... At first this drove me nuts, but I have now let go and am just rolling with it.