I have always been the kind of person who falls in love - with places as well as people. To me, places have personalities. They evoke atmospheres. They get under my skin. Places are individuals, with their own peculiar characters, idiosyncracies and lovable qualities. Some places are unforgettable and they make me homesick. At a certain time of year which, in my thoughts, is connected with a particular location, a vision of that place will drift into my mind and I hear it calling to me, tempting me to return, to savour it again at just that season, when the almond blossom is out or the roses are in bloom.
On holiday I love to visit local art galleries. There are so many ways of depicting a place that you love. Local artists excel at this. Not all paintings are pictorial representations. Some artists select images or motifs from a well-known place and group them together, realistically or maybe with a dreamlike quality - a lighthouse, a clock tower, a Martello tower, a shop front or pavement cafe or a church spire. A kind of artist's shorthand, expressing the essence of that special place or favourite beauty spot in a way that is often more evocative of atmosphere and mood than can ever be captured in a detailed drawing or photographic image.
Painting 'en plein air', as they say, was all the rage once, catching that special quality of light, the sun glinting on the sea, the wind rustling the leaves. All captured on canvas, preserved for posterity. So with writing: a sense of place, a love affair - painting pictures in words. I came, I saw, I captured... and then again, much later, the best part of all: I remembered. This piece was 'shot on location'!
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