@Huitzilihuitl - here is the quick #sketch I did for Bad Slam Not Biscuit @NotedFestival #Noted17 #poetry #illustrator #workhardplayhard pic.twitter.com/RVqrP2RJAJ

— Shauna O'Meara (@OMearaShauna) May 15, 2017

#artwork for Andrew Galan's poem "Black Sun" at @NotedFestival.@Huitzilihuitl #art #illustration #workhardplayhard #kayaking #poetry pic.twitter.com/1mUf7PfFRd

— Shauna O'Meara (@OMearaShauna) May 10, 2017

Open Studio in El Bruc

I am part of an open studio at the Can Serrat International Art Centre here in El Bruc, Catalunya, on 28 June.

Open Studio - Can Serrat

There will be exhibitions of art from several of the other current residents, including Ariel Grout.

From a 2012 Open Studio by Ariel Grout

Readings from three other writers, including India’s Vikram Kapur  and West Australian Helen Hagemann. 

Read Vikram's When the White Man Came for Chai on his website (first published in Ambit Magazine, Issue 204, UK, April 2011).

Amanda Coghlan will have an installation of nine images focussed on the campaign for Catalunya's independence and the preservation of El Bruc.

I'll be performing a combination of poems from my developing manuscript for all the veronicas (the dog who staid) and That Place of Infested Roads (life during wartime) published by the Knives Forks and Spoons Press.

Postscript to Spain

In Madrid I saw Picasso’s Guernica. The scream of the horse, the candle on atrocity, the newspaper photograph. This in Madrid made me want to create grand horrible things.

In Barcelona, Picasso’s surety in upsetting those who tell you how it is done was explored in his museum. The father looks away as lines in the face look like fractures, but their location indicates intent. That sureness through Las Meninas reinforced for me the necessity of challenging the creation of art in all its facets and ideologies.

I went to the Joan Miró Foundation where Miró’s works made me stride like a giant, and growl as a monster. I felt I'd figured a puzzle as I understood where and when he made art. The deliberateness of his pursuit of ambiguities was to create jumping points for imagination. That the monstrous and dramatic figuration was an enabler for the viewer.

Within the foundations of Barcelona I walked the excavated streets and buildings of generations of Romans who conquered and lived in what would become Spain. I did my best to imagine their existence.

And now that I am back in Australia I continue to unravel my jotted notes, stick figure pictures, and photographs.