“I arrive at Joya: AiR on the first day of December, stepping out of the Landrover that has collected me onto soil of pale grey clay. It rains for several days. Inside there are beautiful objects everywhere, both decorative and useful, that take shape in my sketchbooks.  Donna’s welcome is like a warm blanket around my shoulders.

Outside, the earth actually becomes clay encasing my feet whenever I walk about as I become part of the landscape around this solid house of creativity, warmth and camaraderie. Returning indoors as though stepping off the potters wheel, my thoughts become ceramics of the mind. Fanciful and yet, inside and outside, everything has been organised for the benefit of the creative process: if I’m hungry there’s food, if I’m tired I can sleep in my beautiful bedroom and my studio space is a haven that looks out over a Spanish landscape I haven’t experienced before. And there is a wood burner for added warmth. Heaven.

The rain stops, the air that surrounds the hills, mountains and barrancos becomes solid. As a fine artist who paints and draws, my world is flat: the picture plane. And here, there is another dimension at work that envelopes me. Shapes and space fill my mind and my sketchbooks. I cut up old magazines I’ve found by the kindling and logs, pin and stick them to paper creating shapes that echo what I’m seeing every which way I look, through the beautiful silky air of the Cortijada Los Gázquez (Joya: AiR).

I’m so happy to have two weeks to spend here as more people arrive, different disciplines, practices and points of view are discussed. Simon tells us about the creation of this project that he and Donna have devoted themselves to, together with their family. It’s an endeavour that allows me the luxury of time and solitude with my own preoccupations  and no pressure to ‘create’ something. As it becomes time to return to England my lack of expectation or planning for this residency rewards me with full sketchbooks, colour notes, collages that will give my next body of work its shape and form”.

Maureen Nathan

Maureen’s work is informed by memory and the world around her. She is interested in patterns and form with her pictures containing varying degrees of figuration and abstraction. Open in her outlook and relentless in her practice she happily follows her own interests and the process of making: intently haphazard.

You can see more of her work at: https://maureennathan.com