Possibility

In 1984 when I was 40, I purchased a house in a village in Greece. It was a roofless dwelling used only to stable sheep. I did not ask myself whether I could restore the house; I simply knew I wanted to and would. Repairing the walls stone by stone with my own hands, I plumbed the depths of my ingenuity, I met the limits of my physical strength and endurance, I confronted my loneliness, I paid tribute to my father who brought out the builder in me, and I avoided my mother’s reach long enough to discover who I am.

Years after the roof went on and the door was hung, images of the house appeared in my paintings. But, ironically, I have spent precious little time there since the structure became habitable. What, then, made me undertake the restoration? Possibility, I think. What have I brought away from the experience? An understanding that potential resides within each of us, and—if we are fortunate—we develop it into something wonderful.

photo credits: top, Thordis Simonsen, 1984; bottom, Betty Hurt, 2004

Being There

This is the window I recognized in painting #114 shown in the 4 July 2011 post. It belongs to the "sheep corral" I purchased in the Greek village, Elika, in 1984. The purchase was motivated by an inexplicable urge to have a village home of my own to return to after having rented there for two years. At the time I committed myself to the house, I had no idea what my relationship to the village would look like in the long run. Indeed, since taking occupancy in 1991, I have returned often to Greece as an independent small-group travel guide, but I have spent precious little time under my red clay-tile roof. This year I spent only 10 days in Elika.

When I used to consider my relationship to the house, I thought of it in physical terms—walking the footpath to my door, pruning my two olive trees, mixing mortar and setting stone. Being there, that is to say. But my understanding changed when I began to see evidence of the house in paintings I made while residing in my other home in Colorado. Every image in my oil pastel gallery on my web site, for that matter, represents some aspect of my Greek experience: the house, a chapel built over a spring, a heather-clad hill under a fall sky, an olive tree. True, I immersed myself in day-to-day village life side-by-side with my neighbors and am referred to as an Elikiotissa—a woman of Elika. True the house restoration has been a hands-on project spanning many years. Still, I was surprised to learn through the painting experience that, while the window in the photograph above looks out to sea, the opening depicted in painting #114 is a window into my soul.