Before Pink Buddha

I had a lovely house in the little town of Lousada in the lush green countryside of Northern Portugal. Nice house, small rooms, plenty of space for just me...until I started to paint. Anyone who knows me knows that I very quickly expand (even my waistline obeys this principle) to fit all available space ...so the first danger point was coming back home after my travels round the world. The house which had seemed okay filled up fast. Photos, souvenirs, posters, pictures, dangly things, huge wooden masks. They all came to stay. I started off in 2002 with the objective of a black and white minimalist house. HA!!!!!

Things looked bright and colourful - until my muse arrived. he arrived first in the shape of ever larger journals. Journals which cried out to be written, yes, a pen might suffice...but then they cried out for colour, so watercolours were purchased. I got interested - an influx of many books on the subject. Now I needed acrylic paints. Well, the story went on and my house started filling up with art supplies. Oh no...where can I work? My living room became my studio (no more dinner parties, what a relief!) with easels squeezed in. Did I mention easels? because another shift had begun...I had become a PAINTER. I devoured books, many courses, worked hard, got better, expanded and expanded...the story goes on.

My first journals and paintings appear in the first entries of the blog - best kept there I think!

What? No pictures yet?? No...because we have another player enter the scene. I forgot to say that beneath this cosy, crammed full little house lay a huge space known as the 'garage', 'the basement', 'downstairs` or, more commonly 'the dumping ground'. Whenever anyone cried out 'Where shall I put this - the answer came easily....DOWNSTAIRS. Stuff piled up in every nook and cranny. It was badly lit, few windows, no heating, the cats thought it was their exclusive territory...some piles were of the 'enter ye who dare' variety. But it had one huge advantage - it was VERY BIG INDEED!

Half tidied dumping ground!

Potential grasped

Pink! A light bulb! At some desperate moment, probably knocking an easel over yet again in a cramped space, the idea of a lovely studio entered my head. A place where there was room for everything, where I could do EVERYTHING I wanted - even put in an extra bedroom for when stars seemed too much. ...oooh...The studio could be used for workshops too, or a local gallery or...or....

and so The Pink Buddha Studio, so named in an Internet competition by someone who knows my relationship with the big man, and my current beau, the colour pink, .....and the garage, the local tip, was no more.

Enter Jane and Nat. Hard working friends, visionaries, transformers of dark into light and patient miracle workers...the process begins...

AND THEN THERE WAS PINK >>

Mother and son miracle team, Jane and Nat

Every pink spray can within a radius of 20 km disappeared from the shelves!

Every little touch that could be pink, was sprayed!

Pink Buddha is coming.....,he won't be long. He is emerging upstairs to come and help us all!