Cortijada Los Gazquez - Vida en 1000m. Parque Natural Sierra Maria Los Velez. Andalucia.

Artist Lee Maelzer is now installed in he studio at Los Gázquez.

She is an artist who normally works in multiple media formats starting with film and photography and ultimately with paint.

We look forward to seeing how she will respond to the environment here in the Parque Natural Sierra María-Los Vélez, to the giant vistas, the melting snow, endless blue skies, the current moon phase and the almond blossom.

The weather forecast is good and despite the late snow the wind blows warmly from the south and there is a real sense of spring  in the air.

“The rigor of the Los Gázquez landscape and architecture is mediated by delicate beauty and fine detail. After taking in the blissful atmosphere for the first few days, recording the local colours and landscape with drawings and photos, I settled on making my mark with a series of hats made of canvas. Worn outside to provide shade, I hope the hats will become a part of this community. Images of almond blossom drawn directly onto the canvas and embellished with stitch will continue to inhabit the Los Gázquez landscape for seasons to come”.

Last night at Los Gázquez, Joya artist in residence, Tamsin Pender gave us a great presentation on the lives and paintings of her father and grandfather in Mousehole, Cornwall. It was a fascinating trail through history and culture and deeply felt love of this little harbour town. From fishing the Atlantic to the Second World War in North Africa and Italy, all the way up to Tamsin herself exhibiting at the Tate in St Ives.

And to add to the evening young poet Tomas Weber read from his first publication ‘The Small Stones’ published by the Perdika Press who specialise in experimental English poetry.

Artist Tamsin Pender has taken up her residency at Cortijada Los Gázquez. We shall follow her progress as her time here unveils and return to her work in due course. However for the purposes of this blog post I want to talk about her father. Tamsin comes from a long line of Cornish artists and of those predecessors most notable was her father, Jack Pender.

This is Jack Pender in his studio in Mousehole in 1955. He was one of the St Ives group of painters and part of the Penwith Society of Artists along with Terry Frost, Barbera Hepworth, Patrick Heron and Ben Nicholson amongst others.

I’m a particular fan of 1950/60’s landscape based abstraction so tonight is especially interesting as Tamsin is giving us all a talk on her fathers work and career. I’ve included some examples of Jacks painting over the years mostly from different periods in his life…

Adrift 2 1966

Lamorna 1952

Untitled 1940’s

Friend of Los Gázquez, Faisal, has just returned to the States after a weeks mountain biking in the Sierra Maria around the cortijada. Kindly he has made a contribution to our blog to give a little review for all you mountain bikers out there…

Mountain Biking around Los Gázquez

Cerro El Gabar is possibly the highest point one can cycle to near Los Gázquez. A double-track trail heads north west from the road circumnavigating El Gabar.  The double-track averages 9% and is 2.7 miles from base to peak.  A few spots at 15% with loose stones present a technical challenge on the ascent and potential excitement on the descent.  The descent easily reaches 35-40mph between switchbacks depending on nerves and willingness to apply power.  The top of El Gabar presents an opportunity for a complete panoramic view of area….

Sierra de la Muela can be cycled at least two ways.  The steepest trail on La Muela is the unmaintained double-track heading southeast along Barranco del Salar.  The trail grade frequently reaches 16% on loose stones, resulting in a challenging ascent requiring low gearing.  The descent can be performed in excess of 40mph depending on nerves and line selection.  A spot of deep loose gravel can raise ones heart rate a bit on the descent if hit a bit sideways at speed.
The main road climbing and then descending La Muela along the Taibena presents an opportunity to take the challenge either on the ascent or the descent depending on the direction taken.  If ridden from west to east, one frequently climbs at 10% and descends the other side at around 5%.  Taken in the opposite direction, the 10% descent on relatively smooth double-track can easily result in 40+mph.
The best way to reach La Muela from Los Gázquez is the rough double-track descending from Larga to the main road between Cerro Gordo and Cerro Moto.  The double-track averages a rough 10% with spots at 15+%.  Itís a semi-technical high speed descent given the track conditions.

Taibena is the valley you can see left of Chica Muela and La Muela in this photo. The mountain biking fraternity is very welcome at Los Gázquez.

5pm the sun makes it’s way to setting in the west, the moon rises in the east. High wind blows the rain from beneath the weather front passing to the north of Los Gázquez creating this beautiful rainbow.

How many paintings can you think of with a rainbow?

Last night we had  a halo around a three quarter waxing gibbous moon and a sight more beautiful than my photo can possibly describe. It appeared to be an enormous hole in a thin layer of alto cirrus cloud, but could the moon generate enough radiation to evaporate this high altitude moisture? We needed the advice of an expert. So I e-mailed Tristan Gooley (see previous post) this morning and asked for advice…

Hi Simon,
Hard to be certain from one photo, but it looks like a similar phenomenon to a ‘moonbow’. Rainbows, fogbows and moonbows are all arcs, often coloured, caused by reflection and refraction of the light from the sun or moon hitting water particles in the atmosphere.
In this case the moisture may be a thin layer of cirrus cloud. The Arctic Innuit and Pacific islanders have been known to use this effect to forecast bad weather, in western terminology, they can herald an approaching front.

I may be completely wrong though!

best, T

Ah, an approaching front. Let’s check the weather forecast…

there it is.  We are where I have put a red dot. The front is moving to the north of us on a warm south westerly wind. This is often why the east coast of Spain is dry, weather systems seem to move to the north of us held at bay by some Mediterranean high pressure.

Friend of Cortijada Los Gázquez, Tristan Gooley (The Natural Navigator) has a new book. He…

blends natural science, myth, folklore and the history of travel to introduce you to the rare and ancient art of finding your way using nature’s own sign-posts, from the feel of a rock to a glance at the moon.

With Tristan’s help, you’ll learn why some trees grow the way they do and how they can help you find your way in the countryside.  You’ll discover how it’s possible to find north simply by looking at a puddle and how natural signs can be used to navigate on the open ocean and in the heart of the city. Wonderfully detailed and full of fascinating stories, this is a glorious exploration of a rediscovered art.

Tristan is the only person to have flown and sailed single handedly across the Atlantic. He is also Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. But best of all he is coming to Los Gázquez, (at a point we can find in the diary) I shall let you know when.

Tristan’s insight into the landscape will be a fascinating resource for artists. So if you are interested in coming to Los Gázquez at around the same time please let me know in advance.

I wonder if he will need directions?

You can buy Tristan’s book at this shop here.

… or landscapes of Vélez Blanco and the surrounding countryside.

Seasons like these, when the almond blossom bursts into flower, force us to acknowledge that the impact of humanity on the earth’s ecology has been a mixed blessing. However, our long relationship between nature and culture has not been an out and out calamity.

This is a landscape painters paradise, especially at this time of the year. Interestingly the English word ‘landscape’ comes from the Germanic word Landschaft and it signified a unit of human occupation or jurisdiction. So where it might appear that human intervention has manipulated the landscape to correspond to some inner ’spiritual’ concept, it does not. Landscapes are manipulated for food and firewood. American photographer Ansel Adams described the reality of the landscape perfectly, ‘ there is some deep personal distillation of spirit and concept which moulds these earthly facts into some transcendental emotional and spiritual experience‘.

Landscape painting came to be used as the backdrop for familiar motifs of classical myth and sacred scripture. And it would be foolish not to acknowledge that the architects of both of Vélez Blanco’s castles were well aware that, despite the presence of water, this hill is a very good place to build your ‘unit of human occupation’, your dominance over land, man and beast.

I say two castles because the first castle was Moorish (the square structure in the foreground), built from stone and adobe it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 10th century. The houses nestled at it’s feet are the old Moorish homes, secure fiefdoms from the ‘reconquistas’ from the north. The second castle is Renaissance and built by the ‘Marquesas de Los Fajardo‘ in the early 16th century.

Landscape, and it’s consequent representation, is a depository in which to induce some form of  meaningful  mis en scène. Historically it has had more to do with the human condition than the natural. This landscape is the view from Los Gázquez to La Sagra, a sky strewn with wrecked clouds as the sun sets towards Granada. It is our human nature to draw meaning from the void between reality and the view.

Nice things have been written about us by this couple of cool Californians at ‘A World Different‘. But don’t read my words read theirs. Eco-tourism is as much about building / re-building sustainable communities as it is about having sustainable energy systems etc. Globalisation would be a far more ethical and cohesive concept if it was about the sharing of ethical and ecological ideas and knowledge at grass root levels rather than corporate. These folk champion this dream and should be applauded for their efforts.

Awesome, as they say in California.