“Landscapes are dreams.  In time they will not be replaced”

 

I spent 4 to 5 years travelling as part of my day job whilst fitting in a degree in the North of England.  At the time it felt as though I’d only dipped my toe into Mediterranean Europe, Scandinavian Europe, America, South East Asia and Northern Africa. 

 

Time, however, has paradoxically shuffled the pack of memories, but memories that persist are clearer.  I’ve travelled by most forms of transport but I particularly like train journeys.

 

These days I prefer to walk the Surrey Hills, the Thames Pathway, my own pilgrimage from Winchester to Canterbury, and the southern coastline from Rye to Swanage.  I used to bathe in the host sun – a recent cancer operation put pay to that.  Time and place are painterly recollections of when I was on walkabout, when travel wasn’t so prohibitively expensive, and when youth was simple and time didn’t get in the way.

 

I’m aware of wanting to physically exercise rather than “be” in a location, pretentiously writing crap poetry, cigarette smoke curling from my ego.  I still paint some seascapes that remind me of the Mediterranean where I spent a year speaking broken Castellano and little Catalan.  I suppose I wanted to see what Central and South America was like.