Every year my friend who runs a travel agency plans a mystery trip. No one knows where we’re going or who else is coming until the journey has already started.
This year took us through a few stops; a pottery workshop where I made a clumsy little boat in a hostel that sparked more ghost stories than sleep 😀
Then the beautiful surprise was when we arrived to Imsfrane.. I’d been to this region four times before, but never to Dar Tawda — the hostel I’d fallen for through photos, especially the ones taken in snow. I was secretly hoping it would snow for me too. It had already melted by the time we arrived.
The next day, and after a beautiful hike up to Imsfrane (aka Cathédrale) summit (1868m), I led a workshop for the group on travel journaling using watercolor techniques where we learned how to carry places home through sketches, the way explorers always have.
I gave them the tools. I told them the stories. Then on the last day and while everyone else went off to activities, I pulled a chair to face the mountain. Just me, my sketchbook, and that view.
I don’t know how long I sat there. People peeked at my sketchbook, filmed a little, left me alone. They thought I looked calm. Really I was fighting the colors, fighting my own perfectionism, fighting the fear of a blank page, quietly, the whole time.
Yet despite the struggle, painting a place on location does something the studio never can. There’s a sense of relief I cannot explain… Carrying the place with me there and then.. not in the studio, not as a memory but while the feelings are raw.. in a hurry.. under pressure.. no planning or overthinking.
Every place has a feeling.
The light at a certain hour. The air. The stillness of somewhere you’ve never been before.
I’ve been chasing those feelings on foot for as long as I can remember. And somewhere along the way I realized the only way I knew how to hold onto them was to draw them.
Not to capture them perfectly. Just to carry them home.
This is Creative Voyages — art born on trails, carried home on paper. Postcards, field notes and slow art for curious explorers.
A voyage outside and a voyage inside. 🌿
Welcome. ⚓
