The Elder

tales from Jesús Cisneros' Seeds and Fables workshop with Studio Schmal.

I recently attended a workshop with THE Jesús Cisneros, the brilliant Spanish artist and illustrator from Zaragoza. The workshop, Seeds and Fables, was hosted by Studio Schmal- a beautiful retreat center nestled in the countryside of Erlau, Germany, and lovingly run by the warm and generous artists Johanna and Cristobal. The setting was about as dreamy as the workshop itself. We spent our days painting at picnic tables in the sun-drenched courtyard of a restored Fachwerk barn-turned-hotel, surrounded by grazing cows, rolling hills, and the quiet flicker of lightning bugs at dusk.

This is Johanna :).

Our Studio for the week 👆

During our hours of painting we were constantly nourished by the radiant Melanie Wherli. I left with a new found excitement for food as an art form. She made magic with local greens, squash, beans, tomatoes and fresh herbs. The plating itself was absolutely mouth watering. Table settings adorned with sage, scattered cornflower, and chilled elderflower cordials that tasted like summer. She is as effervescent as the food she serves.

Melanie…. “WHAT YOU PUT?!”

Jesús taught us to free ourselves from adherence to fidelity of form and lean into intuition. Letting our hand guide us as we painted images of trees, snakes, birds, fruit and seeds all from our memory. Pictures were absolutely forbidden.

There is something interesting that happens when you draw from memory. The process, in a way, reveals an unconscious attunement to aspects of the subject. The wings of a bird connoting freedom, or the tongue of the serpent evoking the sharp bite of its fangs, the fertility evoked by a plump piece of fruit. We could have easily gone off on a tangent here into Freudian terrain. Instead, we began adding color and abstracting further and further until our images bore no real relation to their origin. We witnessed the unfolding of abstraction, the slow evolution that emerges through hours of dedicated practice: first in seeing, then in remembering, and finally, in the quiet act of letting go.

While I often attempt landscapes, the process quickly becomes overwhelming as each leaf, each limb, each twig transforms itself into a dizzying 5,000 piece puzzle of a seemingly single hue. I much prefer the clean lines of architecture or the simplicity of a still life. So when Jesús told us to go paint a single tree for an hour and a half, I felt that familiar pang of overwhelm, my ADHD brain recoiling at the idea of sustained focus on something so intricate and detailed.

And yet, I was surprised by how much freedom I found within the constraint of the exercise. One tree, even with its intricate network of branches and complexity, felt infinitely more manageable than an entire forest. In giving my attention to just one subject, I discovered a new way of seeing and communicating form. A method that didn’t rely on mimicry or visual references I’d saved from Instagram, but emerged from my own memory and observation. We got to know it so well that when we drew it from memory we could tap into what its visual essence was and how we could convey that in different mediums.

We played with watercolor, oil, liquid graphite, sumi ink and drew what was saw, what we remembered and then made our own forms, animals and shapes from those memories.

I’ve had the chance to go to a number of art workshops in Europe over the years. All of them amazing in their own way; however, this one was distinctly different. Normally, there are a series of new techniques tested, drawing on location, a bit of a field trip, and lots of wine and tasty meals. You return home with new ways of working and ways of seeing. All these hours of painting single images of a piece of fruit, an animal, the human figure culminated in something final and tangible, a narrative driven through sequential imagery. Every exercise, a building block, to create a story from a memory or myth of our own making.

My final piece - an illustrated book, The Elder. A story that details my encounters with an Elder tree whilst living on old commune-turned-organic farm and retreat center in Northern California at Oz Farm.

The end :).