colourScapes is the name I gave to these small paintings after someone I was speaking to said to me, ' I don't like abstract, I prefer landscapes.' I painted Bideau Valley Landscape the next day and thought that colourscapes is a colour version of a landscapes.

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In January of 2019 I went to visit friends across Europe.  I began in the Netherlands and stayed one night in Harlaam.  Wandering about I saw a plaque on a building and went to read it. I discovered that this was the home of Corrie Ten Boom.  We read her book The Hiding Place when I was at school and here I was in front of her home.  It was a strange moment.  I headed on to Frankfurt and Prague before turning for Budapest to meet a friend.  I stayed in a hostel on the edge of the old Jewish Quarter and past by the memorial to the Jews who were interned in the Ghetto here and were transported to the Death Camps in 1943.

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Whilst in the hostel I met an English guy from London who convinced me to meet up with him in Krakow.  A few days later I caught the overnight bus. It was only when I was riding that bus, staring out into the darkened road, the white middle paint beating out a rhythm as we traveled, that I realised that I was being taken to Auschwitz. I hadn't even thought of it until then but now it seemed as though I was being led there.

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A few days later I took an early bus to Auschwitz.

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I walked into camp 2 and past the single rail carriage that is parked there, I turned into the living quarters area and the first sign I read was explaining the fate of the 455 000 Hungarian Jews, sent to the camp in 1943. That this was the road the woman and children walked down to be killed.

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And I followed that road and all the way to the far corner where the Gas Chambers were.

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If you had asked me before my visit about the Human Imagination I would have said that it can stretch so far and wide to explore and understand this world. After my visit I know different.  When I walked those paths around the camp I tried to stretch my minds imagination to take in what I saw and read but my imagination could not and  collapsed from the effort. Like a rubber band that springs limp and so i walked in silence, listening to my footsteps and that place seeped into me.

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A week later I was in Vienna and in the rush to leave left a towel behind that  used to paint. I struggled to paint after that I thought that somehow losing the towel was symbolic of losing my painting desire. Or so I thought. I struggled to paint for another 18 months until in the lock downs of Covid , I sat down and forced myself to start.  I had found a board on the street and brought it home to use as a desk.  I perched it on a basket and sat on my bed and began. And so colourscapes is a sort of release from that period as well as a celebration of who I am at my core.

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