'Canarian notebook. 56 days under the gaze of the Teide '

Day 1 - (June 2) I arrived in Tegueste with certain preconceived ideas. I wanted to continue developing the ideas that had been born during the quarantine in London. Work from those drawings, maybe incorporate some hints of my experience here, but from the first walk around the house I said to myself: What a landscape! I would have to be blind not to realize that I have thousands of reasons to work just by looking around. The small apple tree that grows from a red earth or the mountain that is intertwined with the perpetual clouds of the horizon. Also, savoring that uncomfortable tradition of painting outdoors, so that the sun, the wind and the outside also manifest themselves in the paintings. It has been a long time since I felt the desire to eat the landscape and its motifs. I want to make the silliest and corniest painting of all. I want to be that cliché of a painter, the one who paints under the sun and who paints rose bushes and apple trees. The very idea burns my heart! How many shades of gray will that apple tree have? Written by Francisco Rodríguez Tenerife Residence July – August 2020