November 5th 2008

The great day of exhume the santiago’s pictures arrived, at the patio of the geografy and history university.

Elias Torres Feijo – Vice-Reitor de Cultura, me and Carlos Calhom the Via Galego Foundation’s president) at Mount of Gozo and in Villafranca del Bierzo. At last My work was at last done.

I made this all with great commotin and i’d like to thank to all of you that has helped me in this work – so many people that i’m affraid to forget somoene, by telling names.

I’d like to thank Santiago, whom gave us this inspiration.

More that two years of travellings at the santiago’s path have passed. I have to thank for the virgin mary for the protection, cause i have experienced magical moments there, of communion with the nature, of distress when some problems appeared to us (like the transport of painitngs that didn’t fit at any car or van, some interview where i should explain well the purposes of my work or even when the time was too short to all activities i should carry on).

But i always has friendly hands to help me.

The path never ends, he is the starting point of many painitngs that will be spread all over the world.

Mine is the pilgrims’ way.

On the 3rd october, we were in Puente la Reina to exhume three pictures that were in Eunate, since may..

Then we exhumed the cooper plate that i had left there also in may, just behind the Hotel El Peregrinom at entrance of Puente la Reina.

The pilgrims that were passing by looked at the scene with cautinon.

One more stage accomplish.

Then we follow to the Ponferrada exposition.

We arrived at Villafranca del Bierzo as the sun was downing. Jato started to choose where would be the best place to bury te “heart”. He took his magic wand and started to walk slowly. Whenever his wand moved above it would indicates the best place for the burial. He did that in many directions.

The “heart”.

Jato dig, splitting the soil, from the rocks till the thinner grain soil. There, on the water’s veil that came from the santiago’s church altar, i placed my painting, with golden pigment.

And the grains of soil were put in many layers, from the thinner to the rocks.

The “heart” was let there.

Just before, Marcelo arrived from Santiago and Jato prepared a delicious dinner.

Jato opened a champagne bottle and we toasted to Santiago.

October 1st 2008

My arrival in st jacques signed that the pilgrimage of mixing my paintings with nature was done. But in some way i was not completely satisfied, and i knew that the process wasn’t really finished yet.

Recalling my 1990’s pilgimage, and also the other many times i went to the santiago’s path along my husband, i rememberd that somewhere else was missing to accomplish my journey.

Villafranca del Bierzo, such an emblematic place, where the santiago’s church is placed, a romantic building of the year 1186, with the north portal built with four arches with a scuptural decoration called “forgiveness gate”. The pilgrims that wasn’t able to accomplish the path received the same indulgency, as if they had get to the Glory Portal in santiago.

I also recall when i get there for the first time. There was a shelter made out of plastic. I came back there for a few times and i everytime i was there i used to meet Jato and his wife Maricarmen. Jato, besides he is a character, he has powers in his hands, i could see he healing people with my own eyes, and one of the healed was my mother.

I thought that i couldn’t leave without bury one of my paintings there. Since i was coming to the poferrada exposition, i could take the “heart” that i had left in Villoria de Rioja with my hospitality friends: Acácio and Orietta.

I dressed the kimonos that i would buried in santiago in honor to the sacred kumano’s path.

And so we leave, me, Acacio, Galia, a new friend that i met a year before in Biaritz, and Juliana, my personal assistent.

I have always worked with feminine signs, though at the beginning I did so unconsciously. I have always used the signs of the nutrition of life, fecundity, maternal spirituality and the feminine universe. This can be seen in my exhibits “Circle and Dot, Dot and Circle”, “Bearer of Pearls”, “The House of Time”, “Born of Venus”, and in many other works that I have developed.

When I went to live in the Pyrenees, at first there was no room for a studio, because I lived in a hotel. At that time I had an exhibit in Paris and needed to paint big canvases, so I began to take them into the open fields. One day I noticed that a leaf had fallen on one of the paintings and tinted the paint. I liked that.

At that time I had bought a canvas measuring ten meters, and that is when the idea of the “Four Seasons” arose, a canvas that I took out into the woods and developed and elaborated and painted according to the seasons, always covering it with earth, branches of trees and stones. At the same time I wanted to expand this project by leaving some paintings in dry river-beds later to be covered by water, others around tree trunks, and so on.

Being a pilgrim by nature – in fact I traveled the Road to Santiago in 1990 – I felt that my work had to break out of the four walls of the studio. I formed a partnership with nature, and my work began to reflect its fingerprints.

I believe that this is a powerful partnership. Whenever I retrieve my work, no matter where – in the Amazon, in the Pyrenees or on the Road to Santiago – I am always moved by what the invisible hand of nature has done to my original paintings.

I think that this is incomparably unique art, for in each and every case the will of water and wind and the mystery of stone and earth interact with my work in a very special way.

I often take the painting ready to be placed under the ground, at other times I use materials from the place itself, as with the spring flowers on the Road to Santiago, and the wind and sea at Sète. I do my part of the work and then it returns to the earth, undergoes a period of telluric gestation and is then removed.

To work with the Earth is to work with the sacred, the Great Mother, the Immaculate Conception.

It is like a seed about to be transformed. The final product of all this is very important to me. The Road to Santiago kept ten of my paintings, and the Amazon and the Pyrenees kept one each, but for me it is not just the visual aspect that matters, but rather all the energy surrounding this transformation.

On the Road I began to work with metals. I want to use more and more resistant materials. This is just a beginning; we have to wait to be shown the fruits that time will yield.

I worked with copper, not by chance, because centuries ago the alchemists used the symbol ♀ – which also represents the planet Venus, the Greek Goddess Aphrodite and the feminine gender – to represent this metal.

05/13/08

Burying in the ground

Digging up

05/17/08

I dug up the Heart and other paintings left at Cebreiro.

06/13/08

In the Santiago Path, we stopped at a very special place, a valley always visited for flying saucers, and there also lives na Alchemist that works with rocks and its energy.

He smashes the rocks of the area, and others from many parts of the world, doing his work.

People say that beings from outer space taught him this technic.

I was so impressed with the beauty of the colors of that work that he gave me some, and back home many people asked me for a little of that colored rock’s dust. There were golden, silvery, rose, red and green dusts.

It was something very rare.

Once in Santiago, I thought the beautiful dusts should be kept in little boxes.

So I bought a lot of these cute boxes and let everything prepared for the next day, when I’d bury the first paintings in Santiago de Compostela.

Even working hard for many days and driving for more than a thousand os Miles, i couldn’t close my eyes that night, and when i looked at the watch, it was already five o’ clock in the morning. Suddenly I got an intuition that those rocks had some different energy, not a proper kind of energy to use on my works, but for the alchemist.

I opened the room’s door and placed the little box outside. When i got back, i finally fell asleep.

The Santiago’s Path, 13th june 2008 – Cloister of the College of Geography and History

It was my arrival at Santiago, I couldn’t say that is was the ending of pilgrimage journey, cause I’d have to let the ground work at my paintings and then come back to unbury them.

It was at this emblematic  cloister that I let one of my canvas and a metal plate. I decided to bring them all clean to let the spirits of the past get in the support. So many stories happened at this place!

It was with great emotion and under the blessing of Saint Jacob and the Holy Mother that I let there my work, waiting for that ground to give him shelter.

I let a canvas and a copper plaque there.

Further more we went to the Mount of Gozo. A very strong part of the Path. Is the place where the pelegrims can see the Santiago’s Cathedral for the first time. A joyful place.

With angelo and edinhos’ help, I let a copper plaque and a couple of canvas there.

THE ROAD TO SANTIAGO IN NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER 2007

Today I find myself here again in Cebreiro, 17 years later.

I love this place, for it was here that Paulo found his sword. This is where the transubstantiation of bread into flesh and wine into blood took place.

I left a heart here, near a stone wall, and the other paintings further ahead. In front of these paintings stands a wall with two letters and a book between the stones. I also left another eight paintings buried, worked with leaves and shells, and another three inside a bush, untouched, because it rains and snows here, so I want to see how this will interfere in the white canvases.

Yesterday I was in León and made arrangements for four exhibits: one there, another in Astorga, then Ponferrada and Bembibre.

On the 29th November I was in Puente la Reina, where I disinterred the painting I had done in a field of sunflowers. And I also left six more with flowers and shells, which I plan to dig up in May.

Tomorrow, God willing, I reach Santiago.

The Road to Santiago, July 2007

I traveled along the Road to dig up the paintings I had left there, at Páramos in Calzadilla de la Cueza and Hospital de Orbigo. This turned out to be a great surprise, for they were as happy as springtime.

As I always do, I went to Velloria de Rioja to visit my friend Acácio. This time he came with his sister, Maria Fernanda, who was following the Road in stages. Orietta had to stay behind because of the many pilgrims at this time of the year.

There was a Korean in the hostel who started to cry when she saw me. She had read all of Paulo’s books. She was very moved and gave me a present.

In Calzadilla we met Cesar, who once more helped us to dig up the paintings.

Then we went on to Hospital de Orbigo to meet Emilio, a journalist for the Diário de Leon, which published an excellent piece by him on 25 July, Santiago’s day. He had come to meet me when I came to bury the paintings, and now again at the moment of digging them up. I showed him the diary and some paintings of Páramo and Calzadilla that I had framed.

We went along to dig up the paintings at Hospital de Orbigo. They were so beautiful! Pedro was not there, but his family appeared for the event.

The next day we went on to Puente la Reina to set up the exhibit at the El Peregrino Hotel and do the piece for ELLE magazine with Gema Veiga and the photographer Conrad White. We chatted over dinner after spending the whole day setting up the exhibit.

Like an herbalist, I placed several paintings together to form panels. And the next day we went out to take the photographs, and of course I had no idea what I was going to create. There was a canvas I had bought in Pamplona, I was worried because I did not know and was not familiar with that material. I had already had some problems with the canvas I had taken to Santo Domingo, San Juan de Ortega and Castrojerriz, but I had to work and demonstrate how assured I was, because I was with a journalist and a photographer whom I did not know.

I began to press the canvas against the stones of that famous, beautiful bridge. The tubes of watercolour that I was using were new and it was difficult to achieve the effect that I was after. I thought of taking the canvas down to the river, but I spotted a pilgrim and wanted him to walk on top of the canvas. So I waited for him to arrive and make my request. I went down, dipped the canvas in the river and it took on a totally different texture, went soft and flexible, and the marks of the tubes were diluted.

I went to the field of sunflowers and started working with the texture of the center of the flower, like a stamp, and buried it near El Peregrino.

This exhibit was very beautiful and my old friends were there to help me: Marcelo, Acácio and Orietta.

My friend Suzana also came to pick up her painting which had been buried in the gardens of El Peregrino. It was a mouth and heart with the symbol of Mary.

PATHS IN JUNE

19th of June

We went to Cruz de Ferro, one of the oldest monuments to Mercury on the Way to Santiago.  Every pilgrim who passes by there has to leave a stone.

Tomas came along with a pilgrim who had been traveling all the way from Le Puy.

I had painted four canvases and placed them inside a heart made with branches.

Tomas arrived with his sword and performed the Templar ritual of the Four Archangels.

In the meantime, a group of cyclists from Tarbes arrived, wanting to know whose car it was with that city’s license plates.  I could not even pay them any attention, because we were just about to invoke the archangels.  And then a bus-load of tourists arrived, with the guide shouting out: “take your photos and let’s get going!” – a really crazy scene.

It all ended with a downpour, and the rain did its work.

We next went to Foncebadón to leave the paintings planted in the garden of Gaia.

11th of July
Four days ago my friend Acácio sent me the following e-mail:

HI, MY FRIENDS!

I HAVE JUST RECEIVED a telephone call from ENRIQUE at the Gaia cellar in Foncebadón.  As soon as he opened his restaurant today he noticed that the paintings were gone.  The big stone we had placed on top was no longer there, and the earth had been shifted about.  He was very sad when he called and made a hundred apologies, but we know that the Way to Santiago has for many years had its share of SCOUNDRELS (both male and female).

Christina, I suggest that you paint something in Foncebadón; meditate and we shall see what we can do.

I am especially sad because these were the paintings done in Cruz de Ferro, the ones that invoked the four archangels.  Tomás and everyone else was there, standing in the rain with the tourists, pilgrim Naide who had come from Le Puy, ourselves …

Let’s pray that the soul who took the paintings has no problems.  We know the strength of prayer, the strength of the Way, the strength of Foncebadón and Cruz de Ferro … LET US PRAY!!!

Well, dear friend, this is sad news indeed, but I am going to meditate to understand the REASON FOR ALL THIS.

Even so, we shall go there, for FONCEBADÓN is a living legend that Paulo has premeditated so much about, and so much has still to happen.

Kisses,
Acácio

In five days´ time I will be leaving here for the Way to gather the springtime harvest.

18th of June

We went to Hospital de Orbigo. The idea was to work on the bridge, which tells a beautiful story. A knight fell in love with a noble-woman of the city who did not respond to his love. He spent many years fighting with other knights who wanted to cross the bridge to ask for the hand of his beloved. After many years, when he had slain 500 knights, his beloved finally consented to marry him. The bridge became known as Pase Honroso.

We went to Pedro’s hostel, which is very nice and has a gallery of paintings, some done by pilgrims who have spent the night in the lodge. Every year he also organizes a painting festival, which is a big hit and attracts painters from all over.

Pedro is an enthusiast of the Way, and his life underwent a great change after a serious health problem.

He took us down to the marvelous bridge, told the story, and helped me to stamp the stones of the path across the bridge. Some pilgrims walked on top of my painting, which I had stretched out on the bridge.

Afterwards, we went down to the banks of the River Orbigo and I began to look for the local flowers. I made a series with sixteen paintings.

A journalist also joined us to start writing an article; hell come back when it is time for me to dig up the paintings.

Then we went to plant these paintings in a special place.

We went back to the hostel to have breakfast with all the pilgrims who were there and with Pedro’s mother, who had come over to meet us.

PATHS IN JUNE

17th of June

Sunday, and since I don’t work on Sundays we got into the car and drove over to Astorga. After Astorga, Acácio and I went to Foncebadón and Cruz de Ferro to have a look at the place where I planned to place the paintings and speak with another two of the Way’s characters.

In Foncebadón there is a legend (included in Paulo’s book The Diary of a Magus) that says that the town will rise up from its ashes, after being completely in ruins.

When Henrique began to build his beautiful medieval-style restaurant, the pilgrims would pass by and comment that he was fulfilling Paulo Coelho’s prophecy. He did not know what it was all about until the day he bought the book in Santiago, and then he understood.

Then we went to a hostel where Tomas lives in Monjarim el Acebo, near the Cruz de Ferro. Tomas is an old fishmonger who was ordered in a dream to live on the Way. He performs rituals dressed in Templar’s clothes and wearing a sword. Here, in the wintertime, the snow is as high as his door, and the pilgrims are always greeted with hot coffee and lots of stories.

On the way back to Astorga we saw a beautiful rainbow.

16th of June

On the following morning we went to Calzadilla de la Cueza and I began my work outdoors, once again with the local flowers. Christian turned up that day, an Austrian journalist-cum-photographer who lives on the Way.

At a certain moment I was taken by surprise by a flock of sheep.

I did a piece of work where the small paintings were numbered to form a panel. I don’t know how I will assemble this – I will need a very big wall.

I buried the paintings at Cesar’s hostel, with the help of Nene, a Brazilian hostel-owner.

Then we went to Calzadilla de la Cueza to meet one of the Way’s characters. Cezar is the owner of a super-comfortable hostel, which even boasts a swimming-pool – as well as a delicious restaurant.

Cezar is a cowboy of the Way – they even say that Shirley MacLaine wrote in her book about meeting him (she must have recalled her American desert and John Wayne).

He very kindly invited us to lunch, and after eating I decided to start on a new painting. There was a beautiful weeping-willow there, a tree that I love so much I even had one planted in St. Martin.

I decided to stamp the relief of the trunk on the canvas, then divide this canvas into thirty small pictures, my idea being to continue with the flowers of spring. I would come back the next day to finish the work, because I felt exhausted.

When I returned to the Way in the month of June, I did not know which piece of work I would develop; I took small canvases, a roll and pastel pigment paints. The places where the works were to be “planted” were more or less decided upon. I had very few days to develop the paintings, for I arrived on the 14th of June and had to return on the 21st.

I reached Veloria de Rioja on the 14th of June to meet Acácio, and we went to Carrión de los Condes. I had thought of preparing something for the next day, but the inspiration did not come.

14th of June
I arranged with Acácio that we would place some works in the middle of the Way, so we stopped here, a place that many pilgrims normally skip because they find the spot uninteresting. It is a plateau that turns into a desert in the summer. When I did my pilgrimage in the summer of 1990, I found it all extraordinarily beautiful.

What I came across now was an immense garden filled with lovely flowers with strong colors, like yellow and red poppies. I decided to do a whole piece with these flowers.
Right at that moment it was as if everything else around me was out of focus and my energy was concentrated solely on my work. I produced ten pictures and left them buried in the middle of the Way (among them a picture of a mouth that I took to the Amazon in 2004 and which an Indian girl had altered).

I felt that connecting the Brazilian Amazon with the Way would make a splendid fusion.

Saint James Path – March 2007
ALTO DO PERDÃO

Since it was impossible to reach Alto do Perdão and Virgem dos Pirineus in January, I returned in March. At Alto do Perdão I retrieved the three paintings from the earth.

These paintings had spent the latter part of the fall and the whole of winter there. I was very happy with the result.

VIRGEM DOS PIRINEUS

When I returned to Virgem dos Pirineus in March, we climbed up one day – the next day it would have been impossible, because it snowed again.

We had marked a stone in blue to identify the spot, and there it was. The earth is very red in this area; the painting with the shell turned out beautiful.

SAN ANTON, CASTROJERÍZ , SAINT JUAN DE ORTEGA E VILLORIA DE RIOJA

On the 27th we went to Saint Antan to fetch a painting that I had left there. It was easy to find, but the same thing happened as with the Santo Domingo canvas.

Next we went to Castrojeriz. The wind was so strong it made one hallucinate. I had only ever experienced a wind like that twenty years ago in Ireland, when some ships sank and many people drowned.

The Castrojeriz paintings vanished without even a trace, just as in the two previous places. I was petrified, and thought: I’m not going to have any paintings for the exhibit on the 13th of March!

On the 30th of January we went to Saint Juan de Orteja. Now the road that was closed earlier was cleared and we could get through. But there the same thing had happened. This time, however, there were traces, but the Road had taken the pictures. And these paintings were precisely the ones that I put in the publicity leaflet, and they no longer exist.

In January it was really difficult to recover the paintings at Alto do Perdão and Virgem do Caminho. I would pick them up in March.

The next day I decided to go to Viloria de Rioja and do some work for a night in the – now totally destroyed – house where Saint Dominic was born. I also took the canvas that I had wrapped around the tree in Santo Domingo de La Calzada. And I also worked on two other smaller paintings, one in tones of blue and the other in green. For the first time I worked on the Road with fire. I left these pictures there for one night.

SANTO DOMINGO DE LA CALÇADA – JANEIRO 2007

We stayed several nights in Santo Domingo. On the first night it continued to snow so heavily that the next day Orietta and Acácio were marooned in their village.

We went down to where I had left the long canvas with the story of the Saint in the dry river-bed. We tried to find it, but gave up because the snow kept falling.

Then we decided to make a picture with the snow that would fall during the night, so I rolled another canvas around a tree and we stretched the stick to mark the creases, just like we do in a woodcut. This was deep integration between work, snow, cold and nature.

The strong energy of that moment made Paula and me feel nothing else besides the effort made by working for three hours in the cold, with the snow falling on top of us.

The next day I returned with Acácio to try to retrieve the canvas in the river. It had stopped snowing, and with him it was easy to find the picture.

The canvas had a different material from the others that I had used up till then, and although I had worked with several materials, this had never happened before. The whole part of the canvas that I had painted peeled off like bark, leaving only the cloth, and leaving me deeply disappointed.

To make up for that, the other paintings that I had left out for the snow to work on, plus the one I had wrapped around the tree, turned out magnificent.

We went to Viloria de Rioja, where Acácio and Orietta have a hostel, and where I had also left five paintings. Despite the snow, it was an easy place to dig them up.

I feel that my pictures seek energy from the earth, just as we feel when we do cundaline exercises and feel the earth’s energy rising through our feet and hands and passing through our body. The energy of the Great Mother.

I returned to the Way to Santiago on 23 January 2003 to unearth the first, second and third stages. The paintings of the Virgin of the Pyrenees, Roncesvalles, Alto do Perdão, Santo Domingo de la Calçada, Viloria de Rioja, Saint Juan de Orteja, Saint Antan and Castrojerriz.

Four months had elapsed when we arrived in Saint Jean Pied-Port. Everything was covered in snow, the road that took us to Roncesvalles had been cleared, but when we looked on either side we could see snow a meter high. Even so, it was impossible to make it to the Virgin of the Pyrenees to dig up the paintings. The climb up is very steep and the very narrow road had been closed.

When we reached Roncesvalles we met our hospitable friends Orietta and Acácio. Right then it started to snow again and it grew intensely cold, but it gave me great pleasure to dig up the earth, the mixture of earth and snow, and it was so good to find the paintings!

I was a bit frustrated not to be able to remove the paintings of the Virgin of the Pyrenees… where my hand touches the sky. The different moments of interference in the canvases were subtle; I had laid one on top of the other, so those in the middle suffered less interference.

When we got to Alto do Perdão, there too the snow made it impossible for us to climb up.

I started to panic a little, thinking that I was not going to have any paintings for my exhibit in May.

We went back to the Templar Chapel that had impressed us so much the first time. The Virgin of Eunate is seated on the throne with the child Jesus in her lap. This time she held a sprig of wheat in her hand.

When we entered the chapel, there was a woman performing a strange dance, gyrating around herself like the Sufis do. With one hand pointing to the sky and the other to the earth … an alliance between the sky and the earth, the meeting of two energies, masculine and feminine, THE NEW ALLIANCE.

One day I lay down in a field of wheat in the French Pyrenees, feeling the earth underneath me and looking up at the sky. I had the feeling of perfect communion. When the energy of the sky descends to earth like Jesus, and the energy of the earth rises to the skies, the Great Mother.

On that day I felt that this place was open for me to do my work. I fetched a roll of canvas and said to Paula: “I’m going to do a large painting.” I measured the North portal, the entrance to the chapel. A woman appeared, with a soft, sweet expression on her face, and asked what I was doing. “I work with nature, the energy of the ‘Great Mother’. I’m starting a big painting.” She asked if I worked with earth and I said yes.

I began making the impression of the stones on the ground, as if they were stamps. Then I went over to the South portal. It was so windy there that I had to hold the canvas down with heavy stones. I discovered the vertical lines on the ground. I went to the East portal, where the altar stands, and then to the West portal. The columns and some stones traced the ground. I carried the big canvas to the land surrounding the chapel and painted with the earth. I placed stones and spread natural pigments and left it there for one night.

The next day we were going to fetch the canvas and leave for Madrid and Jerusalem. When we arrived, some cars were parked and we guessed there was going to be a Mass. We entered the church and saw some people holding lit candles. It was the feast of the day of the light that came to the world. We were very moved by this inspired Mass.

The lady who had been there the day before was called Mariam. She invited us to have some hot soup; she was a hostess in Virgem de Eunate. I called her over to see the result of my work. She is a painter too and uses earth for her textures. This meeting was very special.

First Stage

St. Jean Pied-de-Port / Puente-la-Reina

I returned to the Way that I traveled on foot 16 years ago. The way of the stars that took me through forests, plains, rivers and churches all the way to Santiago de Compostela.

I decided to go back there with my paintings because I wanted my work to return to the source of its spirituality, the stones trodden by centuries of pilgrims, the faith-flooded plains.

First day of the Way: St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, the last city before the climb up the col de Roncesvalles. My niece and I had arrived the day before, the 5th of September, to meet up the next day with Acácio and Orietta, friends and hosts of the Way to Santiago. They came to help us not only to “plant” my canvases in the sacred ground but also to guide us with their stories and legends.

In this border town shimmering colorfully in the Pyrenees, we decided to follow the footsteps of the pilgrims, men and women who at each step catch a glimpse of the skies and pass through portals. And so we entered through the gate of Santiago that takes us to the church of Our Lady of the End of the Bridge.

I wanted to stay alone with my friends on this sunny day before carrying my partially painted canvases to the top of the mountains. I wanted to complement them on the mountains because I knew that there on high I would feel inspired.

We climbed the Pyrenees by the most difficult route, which gave us a marvelous view of the whole valley. We were presented with a rare vision of the sun with all its glory bathing in light the mountains that were nearly always covered in clouds. And so we saw the naked mountains offering their sinuous and sensual shapes to the deep-blue sky.

Reaching the highest point, there we found among a sea of stones a Madonna with the Baby Jesus with His arms open. I chose the spot that the pilgrims call “the hand that touches the sky”. The reason is simple: at these heights, after climbing the steep mountain paths, the pilgrims have the impression that they are touching the sky.

Taking my work to the forests and mountains is not a gratuitous act: mine is a pilgrim’s work, it leaves the four walls of the studio and the Way to Santiago is the best place for it. I always thought of the Way when I began to put my paintings in the far-off lands of India and virgin forests of the Amazon. Now the energy of that land will imprint its visible and invisible marks on the canvases.

I took four paintings of a series I developed some time ago inspired by telephone cards. The symbols of the mouth and heart have already kissed other continents and I wanted them to come and impregnate the Way. So this time the symbols of the Way came as a complement: I drew a series of shells, the symbol of the Way. I used as a stamp a shell that I bought in Saint Jean Pied de Port. In another painting I drew the silhouette of the shell, and to the third painting I attached the golden shell itself. The fourth and last painting I decided to dedicate to the Virgin, the feminine energy that has always guided me in my creative work. While drawing, I realized that the Virgin, the Goddess, is omnipresent, even though the Way is essentially masculine, a rough road that imposes on the dreamer the destiny of his dreams. So I made a blue crown and used a golden powder to represent the Milky Way, the arched vault of light that has always guided the pilgrims.

In this place of prayer and contemplation I left my first works of the Way. Works that kiss the sky.

We came down from the mountains to Roncesvalles in the direction of the Spanish border. We saw a crowd, which is something out of the ordinary, and were told that it was the feast day of Our Lady of Roncesvalles.

I would like to bury my work in that place too, which brought back so many memories of my first pilgrimage. What a joy to see the cross on the church in Rocesvalles – actually a pilgrim’s crook transformed into a cross!

Just 300 meters south of Roncesvalles on the road that leads to Burguete, we stopped in front of the pilgrim’s cross, a wooden cross that dates from the 16th century, ornate with the statue of the Virgin. There in the forest I felt a strong presence telling me that my work could be planted in that bed of leaves.

I chose another four mouths and complemented them with the cross of Santiago, the warrior symbol that allies cross and sword. The winds carried to us the slow ringing of the bells of the church of Our Lady of Roncesvalles.

We prayed and from there we headed for Puente la Reina, the town in Navarra where all the roads to Santiago converge.

We reached the El Peregrino hotel, took a well-deserved bath and chatted with our guide-host Ângelo, who offered me his gallery to show my paintings to the pilgrims next year.

Second Stage

Pamplona / Puente la Reina

On the way to the El Peregrino hotel, Acácio and Orietta wanted me to see Santa Maria de Eunate, a 12th-century Templar chapel not on the Way to Santiago. I did not go there on my pilgrimage in 1990 because I could not even contemplate anything that took me far from the Way.

Acácio, however, told me that this is one of the most magical places in all of Spain, so the power of his stories guided me over the sun-scorched plains.

On reaching the chapel, after traveling many kilometers from Saint Jean Pied de Port and planting several works, I spotted a humble but sumptuous building. It was late afternoon and the sun going down behind the mountains bathed everything in its golden cloak.

Eunate, which in the language of the learned means both “one hundred doors” and “the good door”, was fearless on that clear afternoon.

There are stories that say that this is a place of magical initiation where men and women seeking spirituality walk a hundred times around the octagonal construction looking for the gateway that will lead them to the supernatural.

Acácio told me that one of the sides of the chapel is feminine and the other side masculine. And Orietta added that the arches, which could be perfect, are not so for a very simple reason: out of humility, the Templar architects decided not to compete in perfection with the skies.

We walked around the building and I noticed that they both began to walk very slowly. Acácio was looking for the best spot to bury the paintings. I asked why he was walking so slowly and he said that in sacred geometry it is possible for a person to feel the currents of subterranean water in the air. That is how he was looking for the water beds where my canvases could be planted.

However, although I wanted to leave something, I realized that I had no more paintings with me, so I would have to resign myself to leaving nothing there. Now I know that when I come back next year to collect my work I will pass through Eunate with a painting dedicated to this enigmatic Virgin.

We returned to the car and went to the El Peregrino hotel, where I met Ângelo to speak about my work. On reaching this beautiful hotel that he and his family treat with so much care, I explained my project:

“In this first stage I am leaving 27 paintings between St. Jean Pied de Port and the city of Castrojeriz in Castilla Leon. In April of next year I shall come back to collect them and plant others between Burgos and Compostela. So from May of 2007 I want my work from this first stage to be shown in the gallery of your hotel so that those who take the Way can see my “pilgrim” paintings. I am also going to bring out a DVD showing the work process because I sincerely believe that the people who travel this sacred road will be able to understand my intention and share my vision.”

Ângelo liked very much what I told him and accepted to have his gallery host this project for the next two years. This was a blessing because I had to find somewhere on the Way that could exhibit my paintings. This encounter brought to mind one of the teachings of the Way: always have an objective to guide your steps.

The following day we went to Alto do Perdão, between Pamplona and Puente la Reina. On that cloud-laden afternoon I remembered another resplendent one in 1990. I had just climbed the mountain when I saw a Basque pilgrim sitting there dressed all in blue and wearing a straw hat. He was contemplating that landscape dotted with green trees and tones that went from yellow to brown. I took a photo of him against that arid background – later on it would become my first painting of the Way. I gave this painting to the pilgrim Theo and his wife Juanita as a token of our friendship on the Way.

From this memory I came back to the grey afternoon hovering over Alto do Perdão. Legend has it that the devil tried to tempt the pilgrims there using the trick of offering them water if they would stop walking and give up their faith. The good pilgrim continued on his Way and received God’s pardon.

By coincidence I had brought two water paintings (inspired by a series of kimonos that I left in rivers). These two in particular had been left in the Gave de Pau, a sacred river that runs in front of the grotto at Lourdes. On them I drew golden arrows, the symbol of the Way.

These water works were deposited in the ground through which the water of the source runs. Orietta was astonished that I wanted to leave my paintings in the very place where the devil tempted the pilgrims. I felt, however, that a work that had remained in the holy waters of Lourdes ran no risk and could return to their element.

When we finished planting my work, the heavy clouds emptied from the skies, together with thunder and lightning. I realized the incredible synchronicity of it all. I had just carried water to the foot of the mountain where subterranean rivers flow. From this meeting of the waters was born the rain.

The next day was already time to part, and I left in the gardens of El Peregrino hotel a painting of a mouth with the symbol of the Miraculous Medal. Acácio had told me that by planting a painting there, in the place where my canvases were to be exhibited, I would be inaugurating a cycle, creating an egregor.*

I asked Ângelo to help me. Upon seeing the painting, he asked me about the symbol that looked so much like his signature. I told him it was the symbol of the Miraculous Medal, announced by Our Lady to a French nun called Catherine Laborée.

We picked a spot in the garden near a statue of the Virgin that he had hidden there, and there we planted the twelfth painting.

Before going to Santo Domingo de la Calzada, he asked my niece and me to have lunch with him and gave me a present: a round wooden coat-of-arms with the symbols of Mary the Crowned Queen.

Once again I saw the corresponding symbols and felt with all my faith that the Way was accompanying me.

* A collective being composed of a multitude of influences which unite around a common center. The egregor is always an invisible and spiritual being, which is coupled with a physical entity. When several people on the earth unite around a common idea, they give birth to a collective and intelligent spiritual being.

Third Stage

Santo Domingo de La Calzada, Viloria de Rioja, Castrojeriz

When we reached Santo Domingo de la Calzada, we were surprised that the church was still open at eight o’clock in the evening. When we entered, a missionary who had lived in Africa was delivering a beautiful sermon in which he reminded the congregation that the mission of the Church was always missionary, in other words, always going towards the other, always building bridges between cultures. This gave me great inspiration because I saw correspondences with my own work: a pilgrim work that leaves the four walls of the studio to meet Nature, a work that goes towards the unknown and is never the same.

Acácio, Orietta and I explained to Paula, who was visiting Santo Domingo de La Calzada for the first time, why there was a hen and a white cockerel inside the hen-house in the church. I wrote down this story and the next day put it up on the board by the bridge built by Saint Dominic:

Legend has it that a couple of German pilgrims accompanied by their son stopped at a house in Santo Domingo to rest. The owners of the house had a daughter who fell in love with the boy. On seeing that her love was not answered, she decided to take vengeance. She hid a silver piece inside his bags. When the boy was discovered, he was arrested, taken to court and condemned to death by hanging. The desperate parents then noticed that although the young man had been hanged, he was still alive, and went to report this to the town mayor. The mayor was having his lunch – roast chicken and cock – and said that the boy was as alive as the cock and chicken on his plate – at that moment the cock began to crow and the chicken flew out of the room. They ran to rejoin their son, still alive because Saint Dominic and the Virgin Mary were holding him by the legs.

On the following day we went to Viloria de Rioja, the town where Saint Dominic was born, to visit Orietta and Acácio’s hostel. I was very moved when we reached the hostel. One feels immediately that these hosts really treat their guests with love. Upon entering, I saw Paulo’s photo (he is the benefactor of the hostel) and one of my works with the image of the Santiago gateway where the pilgrims lay their hand.

I left five paintings in Viloria de Rioja. In Gave de Pau I had left the blue painting of the kimono with golden arrows and two mouths with shells.

At night we returned for supper, a meal that Orietta and Acácio always offer the pilgrims. The pilgrims thus have an opportunity to share their experiences and mutually enrich their lives. This contact is necessary because the people are in a very strong spiritual state, capable of perceiving things that they never even imagined. The richness revealed in the simplest things – like having a bed to sleep in, a roof to shelter from the rain, a plate of warm food, a friendly word – becomes essential during the journey.

In my work I relive this religious and magical experience, because Nature often presents me with new mysteries. My paintings and the experience that they provide alter my perception of the world, just like walking opens the pilgrim’s eyes to the essence of the journey.

There we were, seventeen people sitting down to dinner in the living room of the hostel, all relishing the privilege of being together after a lonely day’s walking. Acácio and Orietta said a short prayer to thank pilgrims past and present.

Paulo’s presence was palpable, for several pilgrims asked to have their picture taken beside his photograph. At that moment I thought of how many pilgrims passed by here guided by his story and his experience … myself among them.

I went back to the hotel with my niece and we dreamed: mine were about landslides (for some days I had been dreaming about houses and bridges collapsing); Paula’s were about her angel, for the first time.

I had to spend all of the next day working to finish a painting to deposit in the bed of the river that flows through Santo Domingo. In a large area of the canvas I painted seven panels telling the story of the saint and including shells. In the late afternoon we went down to the bank of the river to plant the painting.

The river was completely dry, so I felt it would be ideal to plant my painting on the bed of rocks. The dry leaves on the ground, bathed by the setting sun, gave me the impression that we were already in autumn. It was a very magical moment, and I let my mind become empty while I lay the rocks.

When we finished, the hosts went back to their hostel and we decided to walk a little on the rocks.

At night Paula and I went to a restaurant where we witnessed a very sinister scene: the roof of a house had collapsed and policemen with torches were looking for someone beneath the debris. I began to pray because I had been dreaming about this for several days, and now was seeing the nightmare materializing before my very eyes. The biggest enigma is that since then I have not dreamed any more about it, as if reality had decided to scare off the dream.

As we had another day in this stage of the journey, I decided to go to Casrtrojeriz, where there are ruins of a fort.

For this stage I worked on four paintings with the signs of the Way:
the shell with the cross of Saint James,
the shell with the crown of the Virgin,
the shell with the arrow, and
the shell with the heart of Mary.

First we stopped at San Juan de Ortega, after coming across a shepherd and his numerous sheep. We passed by field and after field of sunflowers unpicked and burnt by the scorching sun of Spain. This sight always gives me a feeling of desolation because these flowers that offer us so much are left abandoned. I see in them a sign that everything that is planted must one day be gathered. May time be our ally when we decide to work with it and experience it, but not to abandon it. I do not want my paintings, planted with so much love and so much history, to end up like these sad sunflowers, forgotten and blinded by the sun. I know that I shall be back.

On arriving at San Juan de Ortega on this grey afternoon, I was greeted by someone I know so well: Father José Maria, the 80-year-old host who continues to dedicate his life to those in need of a shelter.

I remember that sixteen years ago I ate there a garlic soup made by Juanita, a Basque woman I had met on the journey who was celebrating her silver wedding anniversary with her husband Theo. I have never forgotten that soup because when I went to the kitchen to help Juanita, I saw a phrase by Saint Teresa of Avila written on the wall, “God can also be found among the pots and pans.” Yet another lesson on the journey: truth is revealed in the simplest things.

I wanted to enter again the Romanesque church of San Juan de Ortega, which is known for its Virgin, illuminated at each summer solstice. At this time of year a ray of sunshine passes through one of the rose windows of the church and lights up the Virgin’s womb. I chose to plant the painting with the shell and heart of Mary behind the church.

On the way to Castrojeriz, we passed the ruined convent of San Anton, today a refuge for summer pilgrims, besides being a 14th century Gothic monument with Romanesque reminiscences. For several centuries, San Anton functioned as a kind of toll station on the Way: pilgrims had to leave some bread, wine or money there. All that remains today are the arches and the vault of the sky.

There I left the painting of the shell with the crown.

Following the longest street on the journey – about two kilometers long – one comes across the college of Santa Maria del Manzano, from where one can see the church of San Juan with its flanks dominated by the ruin of a castle that was the cause of dispute in the 9th and 10th centuries between Moors and Christians.

I decided to leave the two other paintings inside the ruins of the fort: one of the shell with the cross of Saint James, the other with the golden arrow.

Once my paintings were planted, I began to take my leave of these sun-drenched plains. I will only be back here in a few months’ time to plant other paintings that will move further ahead towards Santiago.

First Stage

Second Stage

Third Stage

India 2005

Amazon 2004

Pyrenees 2003

THE FOUR TIMES

When I was invited by Jonas Stampe and Nadia Capitaine to the Performance Infr’Action Festival in Sète, I had already done some work with earth and water, as well as some experiments with fire and air. But it had never crossed my mind to work with the four elements on the same canvas.

At first I thought of working with the water from the Sète canal. As I had already carried out an ephemeral work with kimonos in river beds, I knew that only a very resistant canvas would be able to endure the corrosion of salt water. So I bought myself a synthetic canvas measuring 3 meters by 1 meter and a half.

But the city councilors vetoed my idea of leaving the canvas exposed under the water, attached to fishermen’s´ lines, during the festival. I was on the Way to Santiago when I learned of this veto and it was because of this setback that I had the idea of working on the four elements in the same work, dedicating myself to one element a day.

I wanted the place to leave its impression on the work, and since Sète is a port I very much wanted to develop a partnership with sea water. So on the first day of the Festival I decided to compose the painting with the waves. On the second day, to design with the fire of candles, on the third to remove the excesses with the wind, and on the fourth day to plant my painting for a year.

Although I had done some previous experiments with all four elements, I was most familiar with earth. In the Pyrenees the earth left its marks in a subtle way, with the four seasons impregnating the canvas little by little. As for the Amazon, that impenetrable forest, the earth simply took possession of the paintings.

In my work on the Four Seasons, I gave a special role to the time of earth. I placed most of my paintings in forests but also made the experiment of working with the other elements: for instance, leaving a painting in the bed of a river and another exposed on a tree trunk. In the Amazon there were paintings that I left in the earth, but because of a flood in the region, they remained totally submerged for over eight months. The paintings were transformed completely in that particular partnership.

I learned that with the element of water the results are far more unpredictable than with earth. The kimonos that I had left in river beds, for example, disappeared completely, either carried off by the current or devoured by the river.

The time of water is the time of forgetting.

THE TIME OF WATER

On reaching Sète I had only worked with river waters, never the sea.
As always before walking a new path, we have the tendency to try to plan, as if we could really predict how things are going to turn out.

Before going to Sète I had prepared the canvas finding inspiration in a Japanese technique of dyeing tissues. This technique consists in fastening cloth bags with pigments in the tissue and letting the river current flow over them and dye them. I decided to sew skeletonized leaves onto the canvas, two by two as if they were a small bag. When I got to the seaside, my intention was to apply the pigments and leave the waves to design the canvas.

However, I had not reckoned with the tide being high. I had to jump over a small wall and climb down to the sea over the rocks. There was only a little patch of sand protected by two blocks of stones. The waves were beating very strongly and when I began to put the pigment onto the leaves I noticed that the sea was coming in and carrying everything off, washing the canvas of leaves and pigment. I realized that my initial plan to let the waves design the canvas would be impossible.

That was when I started my struggle, holding on to the canvas and trying to fix the pigment. It was as if nothing around me existed, just the sea and the canvas and me. I began to throw the pigments directly on the canvas, no longer using the little bags of skeletonized leaves, but the sea rushed in too quickly, leaving only a slight vestige of color.

Since I had bars of pigment, I began to draw with them and the effect started to appear. Then I fixed the canvas to the rocks and began to use the bars of pigment like a stamp.
I saw the canvas becoming transformed and at a certain moment I felt that this was the right time to stop, the canvas had to rest.

I brought it up a little higher where the sea was not as strong and sat down beside it. I felt that we were partners: the sea, the canvas and me. I stayed there contemplating the horizontal for a quarter of an hour, and when it was six o’clock I said my prayers.

THE PATH OF WATER IS FIRE

At eleven o’clock the following morning I was taken to the top of Mount St. Clair beside the Chapel of Our Lady of Salete. It was there on the top that I had my first experience with fire.

After talking to the priest, he opened the gate to the plot of land beside the chapel and I stretched the canvas out on the ground, fetched the candles and began my work.

Right at the start the fire fell and made two holes in the canvas and I felt that was not the way to do it. I began to concentrate a little and little by little I started communing with that element.

Unlike the sea, which forced me to engage in battle with it, fire led me to meditation. The drops from the candles wept, silently leaving their marks. I noted that there were large stones on that plot of land and decided to put the canvas on top of a large rock and let the drops form their own path. Then I let them drop on the canvas and these fingers of fire remained there burning for some time.

I prayed while working and the fire danced before my eyes, bringing back memories. I have known the image of Our Lady of Salete since I was very young. It intrigued me to see the image of this saint sitting with her hands covering her face as she wept. One day I asked my mother why the saint was crying and she explained to me that Our Lady of Salete weeps for the sad people who live on the earth.

On the top of Mount St Clair, in the crater of this old volcano, I saw Our Lady crying tears of fire on my canvas.

THE RAIN BRINGS THINGS FROM THE AIR

On the third day I had to compose with the air. I had already experimented with the air by leaving a painting rolled up in a tree in the Pyrenees and another on top of a tree in the Amazon. Except that this time I had to compose, for just one hour, with this element.

Upon arriving at the atrium of the church of St. Louis, below a crowned Virgin, I was welcomed by a very powerful wind. The canvas, attached to a small clothesline, waved about like very fine tissue.

I realized at that moment that the work of the air is to remove excess. Until I understood this, it was difficult: I prayed, uttered disconnected words and chanted mantras, tossing my air too onto the canvas. Throwing my interior air on the canvas, I felt that I too was removing the excess, that I was being purified. Finally I took my canvas and began to hit it on the ground and wave it in the air like a banner. I wanted the air to penetrate it and for it to discover new forms.

The necessary became clear because I lost the fear of spoiling the canvas.

EARTH: REPOSE AND RESSURECTION

I thought that working with earth would be calmer because I would be dealing with the element that I knew best. I had taken a pick and a shovel: all that I had to do was dig the earth, stretch out the canvas and cover it up again.

I returned to the plot of land beside the chapel of Our Lady of La Salete where I had worked with fire. It was Sunday and all the work was to start after the half-past nine Mass.

What I had not expected was for the day to start with heavy rain. The city of Sète was on yellow alert, with very strong winds blowing and the sea was swollen. When we reached the top of Mount St. Clair the rain fell in torrents.

There were nine of us: Joe, Laurence, Paula, a couple, a father who had come with his young son (carrying a plastic spade to help), Jean Jacques and myself. The wind and rain beat down very hard but I felt that this would be good for the soul. Everyone helped me so that everything would happen as quickly as possible. We had to dig a hole three meters deep on land covered with stones. At the moment we began to dig, the rain calmed down a bit and allowed us to work.

The earth is hard, the tools are heavy: the time of the earth is a time that calls for great strength and dedication from the worker.

We worked hard until we managed to dig the hole and plant the canvas. Just as we were finishing, the rain started even stronger than before. We ended up running to take shelter underneath a cover of sorts on the plot of land, absolutely soaked. We all took leave of one another with much love, but also much haste, because the rain was beating down so hard.

So I left my canvas there in the wet ground for a year. My project is to recover it at the next performance festival. Then I shall see how the earth of the chapel of Our Lady of Salete will treat my painting born of water, fire and air.

The Four Times – Project being developed

On the second day of the St. Moritz Art Masters (29th August – 7th September 2008) everybody went up a mountain with a group of journalists, art dealers, people and museum directors to attend Christina Oiticica‘s performance “Burying of Art”. She buried some of her own works, and she will exhume them next year.

OH MARY CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN, PRAY FOR US WHO HAVE RECOURSE TO YOU. AMEN.

I left Geneva on November 27, the day of “Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal”, to begin this second pilgrimage to the Kumano Way.

I had a stopover at Amsterdam, and before reaching the airport I saw some rainbows in the sky. I say some because first I saw two small ones and then a beautiful full one with another on the outside rim – double rainbows! I thought this was a good omen for this journey. In Amsterdam I was to meet Orietta Prendin, who was coming from Venice, and Stella Pelissari coming from Paris.

Orietta owns a hostel in Viloria de Rioja on the Way to Santiago (she also represents the Jacobean Cultural “Paso a Paso” (Step by Step) Association, and came to accompany and help me with all the work. She participated in my Pilgrim Path process and knew the best ways to photograph, film, help me to dig up the paintings, clean them, put them on their frames and set up the exhibit – really a lot of work to be done in nine days!

Stella is a Brazilian journalist who lives in Paris. A few days earlier, I had gone to Paris for the exhibit at the Grand Palais, and on that same day I was interviewed by her for a Brazilian magazine called Versatille. In the middle of the interview I told her that I was going to Japan and she said that her dream was to visit that country. I said “So why don’t you come?” It’s precisely from initiatives of this sort that great encounters and moments are born.

This time we arrived in Japan through a different door, Osaka. Brad was waiting for us at the airport and we went straight to Tanabe.

That night we had dinner with Yasuyuki Urano, Head of the Tanabe City Tourism Bureau to promote the Kumano Way, Brad Towler, International Director of Tourism and Development in the same Bureau, his fiancée Miro, and Noriko Furukubo, assistant to Yasuyuki Urano.

Before we reached Tanabe, we passed through Wakayama to buy the material needed to fix and interrupt the interference of Nature in the paintings. Japan is really unique, very feminine and delicate.

I also took a trip through this shop!

November 29
We began our great pilgrimage to the places where I had left the paintings more than nine months before.

The first was beside the Nakahechi Art Museum in Bijutsu-Kan.

I had left three paintings there: Hibiscuses, Three blue flowers, and Path. I was very upset when I saw that the first painting I removed – Hibiscuses – was practically destroyed, but I did not become disheartened and kept smiling. Later on I learned that this spot was previously a rice paddy, which explains why it is so humid.

The other two paintings were retrieved, but one of them (Three blue flowers) was reduced to just a small piece of canvas.

Afterwards I met the museum director, who had been the “guardian” of these first works, and gave her my book Pilgrim Path. Then we went to the Bocu Café, the biological restaurant where my paintings were buried in the vegetable garden.

It was very moving to find them. I had been afraid that I would be unable to make the exhibit, and besides, I had already ordered the frames and had also dreamed about Monty Shadow (a friend of mine), who asked me:

“How can you have the frames made before you know if you’re going to find the paintings?”

The painting called Sunflower was beautiful, so were Bocu I and Bocu II, and Blue flowers with leaf was just perfect, waiting to greet me with the magic touch of Nature. This time I did not have to force a smile.

When the work was over, we had lunch at the Bocu Café, a marvelous meal that they know how to make only in Japan!

We went on to Miharashidai, passing through a forest of enormous trees and climbing to the top of the mountain from where we could see the largest Portal in the world, Oyunohara in the city of Hongu.

I had left three paintings there: two Ideograms and Hydrangea.

And from there to Yamabushi Mountain, the fourth place to retrieve the canvases.

There I had buried Fire, The mountain, Blue flowers and Dahlia, which was given as an offering to the temple at Hongu.

And now came the hardest part: recuperating and framing the canvases.

This work called for a great deal of patience, because the drying did not depend on me.

We were installed in a large room in the old building of the Hongu town hall, where we gathered at an enormous table to start the whole process. As usual, I thought: “I’m not going to do this anymore, digging up and having an exhibit at the same time is so tiresome! You don’t know how it’s going to turn out and the risk is too great. Just imagine if the paintings can’t be recovered – or if they don’t dry on time”. A million things ran through my mind. But in Japan they have a time for everything, whereas we Brazilians would go without eating, working all through the night and getting all stressed out.

Not there, things are very different there. We would wake up early, work until lunch time, go out to eat and then come back to work some more until seven in the evening, take a small break for tea and traditional sweets – sheer delights, besides being a treat for the eyes! After that, Stella and I would go for our favorite program: Japanese baths. What a delight!!! Every day the temperature of the water was very high, because these are volcanic waters. The temperature was very pleasant every day, and even though it was late Fall there was still a lot of sunshine. The kindness of the Japanese, and their culture, make the country quite a unique experience.

When all the paintings were framed and all that was left to finish the work was to take the photographs in high resolution; here the Japanese gave us another show of their professionalism. They set up a studio the likes of which I had never seen before. We had to photograph the paintings from above; after considering the idea of using a ladder, we rented scaffolding to guarantee the best possible result.

Now all we had left to do was to assemble the exhibit. The rest was ready: the paintings were framed and duly photographed, and the digital picture-frames describing the working process were already functioning.

We had a free day, and it rained. But this was no problem, because in this way we could see the landscape differently and listen to the stories that Brad told us.

Before I went to Japan I had a dream, I dreamed about the little one – a child. I was with Paula, my niece, and she showed me the little one. He was a child standing between two young boys; I immediately thought of Saints Cosme and Damian – and their brother Doum too.

It was a very powerful dream. When each part of the work was finished, Brad told me that since I had placed my work in the earth and then the earth had returned it to me, I should make an offering in the temple. I remembered that on my first trip to Japan to bury my paintings I had seen a child god and in this same place there was a small temple where people left sweets, toys, candies – everything that children like. I thought of making my donation in this temple.

I told Brad this and he informed me that this temple belonged to the other city, not to Hongu. And the offering should be made to the God of Kumano, Hongu Taisha, in the temple where the pilgrims reach the end of their travels.

While we were on this tour on that rainy day, Brad began to talk about a monk who had dreamed about 99 children, an experience that left him enlightened. And every time he dreamed about children, the dream was linked to this place of pilgrimage and to this God. So, everything fitted together!

On that same day we went to a place on the Kumano Way that was the equivalent of the Monte do Gozo on the Santiago Way (the Mount of Delight is where pilgrims get their first view of the towers of the Cathedral of Santiago, then they relax and rejoice, which explains the name). From this site along the Kumano Way can be seen the Portal of Hongu, Oyunohara.

Brad also told the story of a pilgrim who was having her period (explaining that long ago in Japan women were considered impure during menstruation) and so she was not allowed to enter the Taisha in Hongu. On that same night she had a dream about the divinity of Kumano. In that place there was an Oji, the small local God: in the Shinto tradition, the Oji are pieces of the larger God, as if they were His children. Dispersed along the whole length of the Kumano Way, they protect the pilgrims and are usually represented by stones.

She dreamed that she could enter the Taisha, and that was a sign that showed that everyone could enter this sacred place, even women during their period. On that occasion she also wrote the following poem:

Beneath unclear skies, My body
Obscured by drifting clouds
I am saddened than my monthly
Obstruction has begun

Than night the Kumano deity came to her and replied

How could the god who mingles
With the dust
Suffer because of your
Monthly obstruction?

But even today there are temples in Japan that women are not allowed to enter.

We were very happy to bring this work to an end, and the next step was the offering in the Kumano Hongu Taisha temple, a marvelous place with the following history:

“Oyunohara is an ancient sacred site located on a delta at the confluence of the Kumano and Otonashi Rivers. It was the original location of the Grand Shrine “Kumano Hongu Taisha” and believed to be a “yashiro”, a holy place where gods descended in prehistoric times. In 1889 a tremendous flood destroyed a large portion of the shrine complex and the salvaged materials were used to rebuild the pavilion at their present locations. Of the original buildings, only 3 were reconstructed. The entrance to Oyunohara is now marked by the largest Torii shrine gate in the world at 34m tall and 42m wide. All of the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage routes lead to this serene and mystical clearing.”

The ceremony was very beautiful, I began by washing my hands to cleanse myself, then I donned a white kimono and we entered the temple of offerings. Brad did the translating. It was all very moving and magical. First I went through a purification ritual which was done with a long mobile made of white paper – or at least that is what it looked like to me. Sounds reached me through the paper walls, they seemed like chimes and clapping carrying me to another dimension.

When I came out of the temple I wrote a card to Paulo, because he was the first person I wanted to share this magic experience with. There is a mail box there with a bird, the symbol of Kumano. Its three feet represent Heaven, Man and the Earth. And this mail box is also the symbol of the union of Men and Peoples – all very profound.

Afterwards we had tea with the monk who led the ceremony and we received some gifts, which is a Japanese tradition. The monk, whose name was Ietaka Kuki, was very enlightened.

These were nine days of hard work for both the body and the soul. I came back exhausted and deeply satisfied. I do hope that other opportunities will appear to return to this marvelous place called Japan.