I have travelled very little over the years and have always felt deeply rooted in my home on Canada’s east coast. One becomes tied to a landscape I think. I have talked to folks raised on the prairies who simply cannot live in the mountains, “Old Salts” who cannot imagine settling anywhere they cannot look over the sea. 

 

At the invitation of friends, Ruth and I first travelled to Barra de Navidad in 2017.  Mexico looked wonderful to me but, at the same time, I felt dislocated. The landscape I had left, which I have painted so often, left me feeling I could not paint anywhere else.  We came back for a month the next winter and, by the end of that time, the landscape had begun to sink in.

 

The following year I decided to pack my oils and brushes and take them with me.