It’s been a while since my last Art with a Heart blog post. Life intervened and got in the way of creativity. The last 10 months have been stressful: health issues for both of us, and our lovely house in el Medano became toxic: neighbour problems, construction work all around us, living I km from the airport, right under the flight path … It was one thing after another, a relentless ratcheting up of stress. So we decided to take control of our lives and move.
We looked at quite a few houses. Some were inland, several hundred metres up, but the weather up there can be chilly and damp (relatively speaking 😳), plus we realised that we would miss the sea. So we settled on Poris de Abona, a fishing village a little way along the coast. Poris is like El Medano when we first visited the town, in the early 1990s: peaceful, smaller, less touristic, with much less construction going on.
We managed to sell our house and buy a lovely chalet in Poris, in three crazy days just before the notary closed for Christmas. Then a few days later, we were starting to clear out the new house and I fell down the stairs, broke my ankle, and was stuck on the sofa for weeks, while Richard sorted out the new place 🤢
Richard came up with a mantra to get us through all this stress: ‘Poris Positivity!’. We repeated it to each other and posted stickies everywhere … AND IT WORKED! We’re very happy in our new house now, and loving Poris.
This is the living room, with a few of my my paintings.
… and my ‘Flying Mouse’ sculpture (made from driftwood I found on the beach)
These coloured glass bricks were already in the wall and I made a composition with some of my illustrations.
The kitchen doubles as an art gallery.😊
And we even have a Drago tree.
Fred (aka ‘Frederic The Great’) loves it here too. Here he is having fun in his new agility area in the back garden …
PORIS PRODUCTIVITY
Since we moved in, the mantra has evolved: ‘Poris Peace + Poris Positivity = Poris Productivity’. I’m finally able to make art again. YeeHa! This watercolour of Fred skateboarding is the first image I made in my new studio in Poris—the start of our new life here. So of course I had to call it ‘Poris Positivity’.
This is my new studio …
Fred sniffs out the new studio…
THINKING OUT OF THE BOX
We loved our house in El Medano and we had planned to stay in it for a lot longer. But things change—things outside your control—and sometimes you just have to accept change and think out of the box …
“I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.”
– Georg C. Lichtenberg.
I came up with a new cartoon for my ‘Thinking Things’ series to illustrate this. With politics and social media becoming so polarised and tribal, it’s important not to get boxed in …
FINAL THOUGHTS …
So, this post is all about positivity, embracing change, thinking out of the box, and moving on. We all have to keep moving on up, as the song goes.
Richard took this photo of me in the garden which, I think, encapsulates this theme. This is the New Me, with Poris Positivity …
All the best,
Nikki
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Nikki Attree 