Punta de Ses Portes

I’m taking a holiday this week as I finish one work contract and before I start another. Me and Jan are down on the Island of Ibiza, a place I got to know quite well in the late ’80s when I spent a year teaching English over here. I was a little aprehensive about how much it might have changed since I last came in the mid-’90s but I needn’t have worried; there are more villas built over the hillsides of course, and some of the funkier old parts of town and a bit too tidied up, but it’s still a magical place with a chilled-out vibe all of it’s own and the people here are great.

We’re staying in the Salinas area, down the road from Es Cavallet beach, a lovely place where, like most of the nice beaches here, you can scamper around with no clothes on which does feel good after a long, cold winter. At the end of Es Cavallet is a headland called Punta de Ses Portes with a magical landscape of dunes, rocks and scrubby pines which I’ve really fallen for. Right at the tip of the headland is an old stone fortification tower and I’ve been sketching this part of the island more than any other this week.

Here’s a couple of other holiday snaps, firstly the beautiful water at Cala Conta:

And in the evening after a truly scrumptious dinner at a restaurant overlooking the sea:

Las Salinas 1

Next Saturday we fly off for a holiday to Ibiza. We’ve rented a cottage just in the hills overlooking the Salinas, or salt pans that cover a peninsula on the south-western tip of the island. Luckily, the local government saw fit to make the area into a nature reserve just over ten years ago, limiting the building and development work which has blighted so many areas in Spain over the last few decades. The production of salt was the main industry on the island for centuries and the system of shallow pinkish-coloured pools, channels and sluice gates has not changed much at all. It’s also right next to the wonderful Es Cavellet beach so fingers crossed for the sun, it is still only April after all, even in Ibiza. Anway, whatever the weather, it’s a lovely landscape to unwind and laze about in. I’ll probably do a series of these paintings/collages, I’ve recently been looking at Michael Ayrton’s Greek Landscapes and they’ve got under my skin rather.

San Agustin

A combination of the very late arrival of spring (but lovely in London today – at last) and the fact that I’m just about to finish one work contract and start another led me to the conclusion recently that it was a good time to take a holiday. Jan was feeling the same, having been through an even worse winter in Berlin and working hard on his two photography exhibitions. So in a couple of weeks we fly off to the island of Ibiza. The weather there in late April won’t be guaranteed sunshine but it’ll almost certainly be better than here and it’s one of my favourite places. I love it not so much for anything in particular – it is beautiful but there are certainly more dramatic and unspoilt holiday destinations – but rather for an atmosphere about the place which just makes me feel good.
The collage is inspired by the tiny village of San Augustin; with it’s old white church it’s so characteristic of the island and very evocative of my time there when I lived in the hills outside Ibiza town for a year back in the late ’80s. I can’t wait to go back and show Jan some of my favourite places.