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11/17/2005: "My Forgotten Studio" by Jose Freitas Cruz
I stumbled upon my first studio away from the house on one of my regular hikes in the Sintra hills outside of Lisbon. Of course at the time I didn’t even know that it would become my studio and I like to think that the conditions in which it slowly did become ‘mine’ are rather mysterious, almost magical. Tucked away in a narrow valley along the winding road that leads toward the lighthouse at the westernmost point of Europe, a 19th century house had been left to rot, surrounded by a forlorn and overgrown estate that somehow had a pull over me, it could well have been the mysterious-looking tree that stood-out amongst the confusion.
One year later I was pleasantly surprised to see that someone had acquired the property, fixed the house and was designing a landscaped garden around the tree that I loved so much. Within another year the place had turned into what looked pretty much like a vision of paradise – a garden just like the one you’d expect to find beyond the mountain pass in Frank Capra’s ‘Lost Horizon’. The mere sight of it filled you with joy. I remember voicing out loud to whomever I was walking with that day that this would be the ideal place for an artist to have a studio, I remember also thinking secretly that I would have liked it to be me.
And yet another year went by, at which point I was introduced to a Scottish artist [now living and working out of Florence] and was invited to lunch at his mother’s house. The map I was given failed to give away the surprise, after all I was used to walking amidst the valleys and over the hills, but as I drove closer it became difficult to stop my heart from beating faster until it almost stopped when I dipped into the valley and passed the gate into the estate. My heart hadn’t stopped but I felt, as I always feel whenever I go beyond that gate that time had. I had reached a very special place.I was never one to push my luck, I’ve always believed that things move at the speed they are meant to move and that the best course of action is to keep your eyes wide open to seize the opportunities that are given, when they are given – never before and never forcefully. This will sound commonplace but it’s so often forgotten: things come to us when we are ready for them, we should live every moment we are granted with whatever is given to the fullest… and we should be willing to let them go when the time comes, without regrets, to make way for the new. Having said this, another five years would go by between that first visit and being asked to transfer my studio to the house, and never once in that time did I mention to either my friend or his mother the mysterious coincidences I read in the unfolding of events.
When the invitation came I had almost forgotten those words I had spoken to myself so many years back. I had recently returned from a second long trip to India and was invited [summoned, really] to the house for lunch in the shade of pine trees on a sunny afternoon in May and I was talking to my hosts about plans for the coming years [what would have been stage two of the master plan I mentioned last time] and of how painting in the house was becoming difficult [the lack of space, the fumes from the oils and turpentine]. I mentioned that I was looking for an abandoned warehouse in the port of Lisbon where I might rent a space, but the prices were surreal because everybody had discovered the charm of the old port structures, and restaurants, bars and aerobic joints were popping-up like mushrooms. That was when the question was voiced: would I not consider setting up my studio at the house?
I still have difficulty expressing what it was that I felt at the time, I guess words won’t do the trick because in some way it all happened in a place beyond words. I was surprised and yet not surprised. I somehow knew that it was inevitable, but to hear it materialise felt strangely odd. The feeling of fear was not far off and yet I was overjoyed. I ran down into the garden to check the annexe I was meant to occupy – with the mysterious tree in ‘my’ front yard - and then returned to the table eager to discuss the details. When I asked how much the rent would be I was told not to be foolish and to consider the following arrangement: the annexe would be mine for as long as I felt inclined to work there in exchange for which my patron only had one wish, that I give her one painting [the one painting] I felt she deserved in return. I could think of no better arrangement.One cold winter morning a few years later I wrapped a large triptych I knew she had grown particularly fond of, scribbled a few words on a card and took it up to the house-maid and asked her to bring it in with Madam’s birthday breakfast.
When my wife and I left for Berlin and later Borneo my patron told me the annexe would always be there waiting for my return. Perhaps I found it hard to believe – hard to believe that I ever worked there in the first place, and secondly that it would be there waiting for me - and therefore I never considered sharing its whereabouts or my connection with it with anyone I met in the years since then. Who would believe such a story? Since our return we’ve been back to visit Frances and her magical garden, nothing has changed, time still stops when you drive past the gate to her house, and just as she had promised I found the easels, brushes and paintings I had left unfinished just as I had left them, waiting for my reluctant return to paradise.
I believe in [and work hard at] moving on, in not repeating things simply because I’ve grown accustomed to the rhythm, in not being attached, and I truly assumed I would not go back, that I would finally be able to have my studio at home again now that we found a suitable house, but it seems that the magic of the place still draws me to it. Last month, with the first major rainfall in a very long time, I discovered that the studio I had set up at home was vulnerable to heavy rainfall and humidity. It is clear now that I am meant to return.
