A lot of artists have a habit of travelling and using their memories and changing environment to inspire them to create new works. Travelling has an effect on any individual, whether they’re a watercolour painter or a retired accountant. Seeing new locations and learning more of a culture whilst immersed in it can change your world perspective, and an artist’s work is sometimes based around the same concept – helping someone see something from a different angle. But what are the benefits, beside inspiration? Well, for one, it may allow you to find the ideal location for your skills, from improving them to finding tools that will allow you to make the most of them. Gadgets in Tokyo could be great for anyone from a webcomic artist to a web developer who is seeking new tech to work with for a design on partypoker. Meanwhile, hunting for cave paintings could lead you all around the world, and finding them might influence your art style or lead you to create new works for a themed gallery event. This might sound expensive, but it’s worth the investment, and you can always supplement your travels by selling the art you’re creating while you travel, as people may enjoy seeing art created by a non-local. You’ll also make many connections with people in the art communities, which is important for when you’re looking to get enough publicity for your work and need the right people in the right areas to help make that happen. Lastly, you need to travel because it’s part of life! To stay in one place the entire time your alive seems like such a waste of your legs, of the world around you, and even if you don’t find anything that inspires you, you’ll come away with some incredible memories and a wider personal knowledge of the world, and that can never be a bad thing.

My parents, a couple of true sea lovers never owned their own boat, yet they often arranged our family holidays on board their best friends motor-cruiser. Well knowing that such kind of  holidays would make priceless memories for me and my sister, they managed to get everyting right, in order to avoid any possible annoyance: the chosen destinations were always reasonably close and the motor-cruiser capability let 4 adults with their 4 children, to cohabit without particular problems during the navigation.  As 7 or 8 years old kids we used to play below deck during the passage,  were trained to sleep two by two in the berths, or allowed to steer for a while. Great fun!  Would be my parents tricks useful to some travel advisor at hand, in order to arrange super special holidays for parents and childs?  I don’t know: yet it was exactly during a recent night-cruise, that these memories could’nt wait anymore: the boat pushed by a gentle and stable breeze under the light of a benevolent moon, having nothing do but gazing at the whispering sea, I experienced that peculiar meditative attitude that every sailor, under similar circumstances, had surely learned. “Why “-I wondered- “I am so invariably at ease while on board whatever boat or ship?”  ”Where does my sense of  well being when resting in a narrow berth during a rough navigation, comes from?” Off course, you see, the very obvious answer is deep in my childhood.

A friend of mine lives in Las Palmas, Canary Islands. He recently wrote me about Lanzarote, an island of contrasts -according to him- where  long ocean beaches coexist with the lunar atmosphere of the National Park of Timanfaya.  Harsh in some ways, this island can surely surprise me with its beauty that now I wish to discover. Meanwhile I’m only browsing the Web and searching among heaps of  low-cost deals, I found out that these cheap flights to Lanzarote are really worth checking! The island is the easternmost of the Canary Islands and is about 170 km from the African coast. My friend wrote that probably  the first thing I’ll notice -as an architect, is the elegance of Lanzarote buildings: white traditional style buildings never exceeding a certain height, with green or blue shutters.  It is the result of a plan strongly supported by architect Cèsar Manrique, who wished to preserve and protect the natural heritage of the island. Manrique,  born in 1919 in Arecife, after living in Madrid and New York, returned to his beloved island in 1968 and began a series of works, with the sole goal of harmonizing the landscape in the artistic creation. The otcomes of his work are scattered throughout the island and make it a unique place in the world. His house, Taro de Tahiche 5 km from Arrecife, was carved out of a solidified lava flow: it is the result of  a game of surprising contrasts that includes the blinding white of the structure and the black volcanic rock. My summary representation of Taro de Tahiche relies on a photo found on the Internet; it’s  just a personal reminder until I’ll be able to pay a visit to my friends in Lanzarote…

Most of us live their lives within a consolidated routine, whose boundaries completely depend by our will. In other words we are supposed to be sufficently self-possessed in order to get out our rate-race as soon as we are fed up with it: our mental well-being cannot but improve! With this respect we typically long for a trip, because a trip allows us to step beyond our mental and physical boundaries in one fell swoop. Among the other remedies late holidays give the persons the chance of making them feel good about themselves quickly, just because set them free to get away from everyday life in a few days. Personally I think that this “wake up and leave” attitude should arise from endless pretexts, each of them very personal. I mean, the fact of  being stuck in a boring life-routine should not be the only reason that drive us when we suddenly realize that we need a break. Sometimes is a song we listen to, or a film we watched to make us going for a precise holiday destination, perhaps a place we have been long time before or a place we have never been. My friend Gino has come from Thailand a month ago and kindly gave me  a new cotton sarong of the real and authentic kind used by north-east Thai farmers. You know one thing? I put the colourful brand label on my desktop and I am watching it  day after day, and I can’t escape the feeling of give up everything: there is just a Thai holiday in my mind!

Illustration Friday topic is: boundaries

I am quite an organized fellow when it comes to plan my trips. Since I’m going to be “on the road” usually for long, I always try  to arrange as many details as I can before leaving: booking in advance  is a must for me. Off course many people simply let their customary life-style go on:  late deal holydays is a perfect choice!  I know that a last minute rush to get organized can be fun and exhilarating and, I have to say, I experienced this special frenzy a few times when booking my flights as little as 24 hours before travelling! I suppose that my last last-minute flight happened a couple of years ago, while departing the  pictoresque Manda airfield (Kenya). Actually my first plan included a bus trip to Mombasa. I would left the island within a week so spending a few days more by the beach. Travelling by bus in Africa is a time consuming process, everybody knows, a bit demanding too but quite enjoyable to me. Yet some sudden news from home made my plans changed:  I had to hurry, in order to attend to my exhibition opening that had been anticipated. Fortunately enough the local air carrier had a vacancy on their Nairobi flight next day.  A lovely and imponderable last minute chance which made me feel suddenly happy and brazenly lucky!  The day after I found out that the plane was not exactly crowded: perhaps ten passengers all in all, and, among them a lovely red hair woman I had met a few days before…

I’ve not been yet in the U.S. These days however, a good reason to drive me there would be to visit Key West: I have just been re-reading Hemingways’s  “To have and Have not” and now I fancy a quick trip to this very tiny island, about 6 km long and 3 km wide. Key West City  international airport provides services and, as a matter of fact, there many available Florida Flights nowdays…On board his boat Hemingway’s hero Harry Morgan the smuggler, navigates between Key West and Cuba: a boat full of illegal spirits and Chinese clandestines. Hard and tough, Harry Morgan is the symbol of  every outcast “condemned” to make use of whatever risky trick in order  to survive a society split between who has and who has not. Generally speaking I don’t especially appreciate Hemingway’s narrative; yet  this short novel published in 1937 at the end of the Great Depression, inspired by that era, still conveys strong suggestions. In the present economic world trend, Morgan’s character  sounds so contemporary as his misadventure.

Plenty of cheap flights to India in Bangkok! I had bought one, a night flight to Delhi. I had got my 6 months visa at the Indian Embassy in Sukhumvit. After travelling an year I was now coming back from the costly Japan. Yet it was to early to get back home and India was on my way home: a great, fascinating place to visit,  an affordable and exciting stop-over before to fly to Italy. The night flight found me mostly reading a beautifully illustrated, yet  misleading India guide book. When the plane landed my mind and my eyes were so full of visual stereotypes about sacred cows, sadhu, fakirs, holy men, Kumbha Mela, and then Taj Mahal and Hindu temples, snow capped peaks in Himalaya and the Ganga river, that I said to myself: “The author of this book is just exaggerating and his is a very trivial way to advertise such a wonderful land: there must be a deeper way than this!.” . But, alas! A few minutes later, at the passport control desk, the mature female officer checking my visa, smiled politely and pointed out that, during my six months stay in India, I would surely meet a fakir.  Her concise  talk caused my sudden, puzzled  immobility which she could not but  noticing:  to check that I had understood,  she gently turned her head and glanced to the closest wall where an old poster promoting tourism in India, was sticked: a poster that my eyes had obviously, unconsciously rejected…When I left India 4 months later, not even a fakir had been in sight.

For us Westerners, born and raised by the concept of “fixed price”, bargaining may seem a strange practice at first, or more benevolently, a waste of time. On the contrary Africans think that every bargaining is a challenge to immagination, a friendly way to “duel” with the customer, to value his ability and patience. Despite our different ideologies both of us look forward to get the best value: actually  a holiday deals is the golden rule of everybody who travels on the cheap. But even travellers who have no definite plan but not going home soon, need to bargain. So who cares if an hotel room deal or some souvenirs purchase turn into a time consuming process? The very thing is getting the right price, and even more important, being positively influenced by the local habits. How could I forget, for instance, the never ending deal I had in Mombasa with The Hydro Hotel indian owner some 30 years ago? How to forget his lethargic manner, purposely “provocative”, that included scores of apparently inconsistent questions and ended with a cup of chai sipped togheter, after he had appreciated my skills and before fixing the room final price: 18 kenyan shillings a day. A great price! So when I went back in Mombasa Old Town in 2009, I could not escape the feeling of paying a visit to the old and lousy Hydro Hotel which, I found out, was not changed at all. I climbed the stairs  and reached the same wooden desk at the reception, as in dream. The young clerk listened to my story, laughed a lot and said that the old baba retired just a few years ago…

Illustration Friday topic is: influence

On August 13 morning, 1978, I woke up in  the ground floor dormitory of King George VI Memorial Hostel, Holland Park, London. I was very dizzy. The first thing I could see from my bed was a bunch of clothes in the middle of the room and my room-mates standing around it,  picking up their trousers and shirts…What the hell had happened was clear to me when someone told that burglars had entered the ground floor dorm in the nighttime, by an open window, sprayed the air with some funny sleeping gas, stolen everybody’s money. I was definitely broken! I went to the dorm upstairs where my travelling companion was, I talked to him and borrowed 30 £. All I could do with such little money was to buy a cheap ticket home. I went for Magic Bus. At their travel agency in  Shaftesbury Ave they told me that a coach bound to Greece was scheduled on august 15 at 8 pm; I was supposed to get off in Milan, where my dear aunty lived. The ticket price was 25 £! All I had to do was to survive until the bus departure. Friends of friends drove me in Weighton rd, Penge, where someone else lived in a squat. I was welcomed and I was suggested to attend the nearby Hare Krishna restaurant where I could get free vegetable soups. On august 15, the magic bus left from Charing Cross. I was on board, rather hungry, a Wimpy Bar sandwich in a box, 5 copper pence in my right pocket and the absolute certitude to be in Milan in less than 48 hours. The bus was overcrowded by last minute tourists, willingly looking their hot greece holidays. In a hurry, we all where positively hurry for some reason, but, alas! that bus company was really magic. As soon as we reached Chamonix Bus Station, on the French side of  Mont Blanc tunnel, the Greek driver asked everybody to get off:  a new magic bus would be arrived in half an hour and picked up all of us. It is a fact that after 6 hours no bus whatever was in sight yet! All The Brits where absolutely disgusted and very, very angry. I left them there , still waiting for their never coming bus, and I  caught an ordinary shuttle bus to Aosta, Italy. Once in Aosta I went to a police station, I showed my fully empty pockets, so getting a printed temporary permit to travel by train for free to Milan. Happiness and exctiment swelled within me: I felt so proud, I was just 18 after all…

Illustration friday topic is: swell

A very good reason for a cyprus holidays is to visit the archeological greek sites, particularly the temple of Aphrodite and the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates.  Everybody who has been visiting some “special” archeological area, has experienced a very peculiar and powerful  feeling, something that really can project the visitor back in the past, making him almost able to be phisically in that very place many centuries ago, among the ancient inhabitants and their voices…I suppose that the temple of Apollo in Cyprus makes no exeption: about 2,5 kilometres west of the area of Kourion’s ancient city stands the temple of Apollo “Hylates”. In it -being one of the main religious centres of ancient Cyprus -pilgrims form all parts of the island arrived at the sanctuary of Apollo and entered in it through its two main gates…Can you figure this out?