Just got home from a trip around the coast of the Iberian peninsular during which I rediscovered the true value of the act of drawing. Two highlights were Gehry's Guggenheim and a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. No sketches of the amazing spatial extravaganza of Gehry's architecture ....... I just wandered through it and enjoyed every moment. But in many other places my A5 sketch book holds a record of my responses. I spent just over half-an-hour in the Praza do Obradoiro full of pilgrims in front of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, and did two quick drawings. The spiritual experience had already built up within me. From an expectation that one day I might be able to include Santiago in my visits to sacred places, to the actual Camino itself as I finally walked through the narrow streets framing a view of the cathedral towers in the distance, and then entering the huge space full of peoples some standing, some sitting, some resting on their bikes, some in groups, some solitary, yet all being clearly lifted by arriving at this special place. I still get very tired with my illness and after my journey was quite exhausted. I found a gap between people on a low wall to sit upon and opened my sketch book and my fine-liner pen and so there appeared on my paper the building and the people before me. I know when I must stop, so I sat for a while taking in and reflecting on that which I was experiencing. I stood up, took a few steps, and felt wonderful, as though all the tiredness had been replaced by a lightness and a new energy (later in the week I experienced identical changes when doing other drawings, however quick, and have related this back to my life-drawing over the years, when following a life session I feel a huge sense of wellness). I have always claimed that drawing for me is a meditative event in which I have entered a different and deep state and always feel so good afterwards. But this time in Santiago it was so evident, and concentrated. As I walked though the peoples and as my eyes moved over the architecture I stood and recorded a brief response to the three towers of the cathedral. Looking back through my sketch book this second drawing reminds me of a visit to Rouen and my subsequent examination of Monet's numerous impressionist paintings of Rouen cathedral.
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