 This residency was beyond my expectations. I came with a goal in mind, wanting to discover the landscapes to find inspiration and hopefully, create a body of work with watercolour. This year has been tough for my creativity, and leant me to question my love for watercolour. Painting began to feel more like working than anything else. The joy had started to fade gradually, coming to a point that I painted only with a goal in mind, for a book or a workshop, but never for the joy of it. I had lost the spark. I came to the residency prepared to paint but I also took with me a lot of mixed media tools, just in case I didn’t feel like it. I researched hikes, downloaded an offline map, and carried in my suitcase more things than I should have. I made a plan : spending one day hiking, immersing myself in the landscape, and one day painting what I saw the previous day. I wanted to keep the connection with the landscape at all times, to create using what I saw, not with what I already knew to paint. I felt immensely grateful the day I arrived and discovered the landscape : how to not fall in love with the estuary, the trees, the hills and the sheep ? I don’t know a place that looks more like a fairytale than this one. I felt the urge to walk, see everything, capture every plant and atmosphere, and more importantly, I found the joy to paint again. Everyday, I looked through the window at the estuary and went wandering outside. I printed some photos of elements that inspired me, stuck them on the studio wall with some notes about what they evoked for me. A beautiful foxglove turned into a nest for a mouse, the ferns became a hiding place for a badger and the fireweed a bed for a fox.
I walked 140km in two weeks, followed every path that I could see and learnt to know the place. I started to feel like I belonged there, that my creativity belonged there and that I could stay forever. The love for watercolour and the desire to paint all day came back and I left carrying with me a renewed happiness, a lightness that I hadn’t felt in months. I now feel like myself again, creative, strong and more important, happy. These two weeks focused only on creativity were exactly what I needed : no routine, no everyday mundane life, no work. Just curiosity, creativity and happiness. Sarah Van Der Linden website
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