I
consider our house and its big garden to be a gift from Mother Earth! When I first saw it, I had the feeling that I had arrived. Everywhere felt very strong. I had been coming to Mallorca since 1976 to visit my sister in Deia, which I saw as a place where people could live happily ever after.
The property had 5 sheep and not a blade of grass grew on it. When they took the sheep away, it grew only beautiful spiky thistles among the olive trees, but I dug and climbed everywhere to cut and gathered them and burned big holes into which I also added old fish from the refuse of the market. Then, I planted the fruit trees we have and I care for this land in the best way I can.
The favourite room in my house is every room! Each one is so cosy. They are filled with artworks – my own work as well as my family’s. I love their company and the stories behind them. I live with their presence and the different stages of my life all at once.
But my studio is the place where I spend most hours of the day. Where I materialize, in paint, ideas and intuitions, and in clay the vessels are where hope remains. Burnishing them feels like a prayer for the future generations; to be able to “Return to the Garden" and care for it.
The house in the olivar once belonged to a teacher who transferred it to Eddie, a man from Belgium who learned to make walls and stone terraces and his love was felt everywhere. He knew we would be the right people for the house and to continue what he had started. I let the garden go wild to enjoy all the natural herbs and flowers, plus the bulbs I plant every year and which multiply, giving so much pleasure along with abundant fruits. As my sons like to say, it is living in the miracle.
After all has bloomed, dried and seeded, at nearly the end of the summer, we trim it in short pieces to lay and enrich the soil for the next season of greenery, flowers and fruit from this beautiful Mediterranean – whose rock, I was told, is made by millions of hard-shell plankton falling to the bottom of the sea and rising over millennia to become this beautiful, fertile and hospitable land to people who can feel its love and are inspired to create the beautiful music; man and woman, children, young and old and gracefully dance to its rhythm.
