Flores Gallery:
An Artist-in-Residence on the Island of Flowers

If you think it’s hard to paint in a 20-mile an hour wind, try taking a photo of yourself while painting on a remote trail on the island of Flores! I manage to hold the camera steady and click one-handed. I’d hiked to this spot on a rocky trail after driving to the north end of the island, guided only by a pamphlet translated into English.

The Ponta do Ilhéu trail.

My painting of the Ponta do Ilhéu trail.

Everyone asks, “Where is Flores?” When I say it’s the westernmost island of the Azores chain, some of my friends knew the Azores lie somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I must admit I didn’t have a very clear idea exactly where before I took off from Boston to become Artist-in-Residence at Footpaths to Creativity.

Flying over puffy clouds dotting a sunny North Atlantic, my first glimpse of Flores is of one singularly larger cloud. As the prop airplane from São Miguel nears, the large cloud reveals a land mass just below: emerald green and rocky. We land in Santa Cruz, the main town of the twelve villages in Flores.

I try to negotiate a car rental at the only agency across from the airport, but it’s expensive and anyway, there are no cars available till next week.

Approaching the runway at Santa Cruz

The taxi driver thinks he knows where the “artist house” is—he sets off on a winding road hugging the cliffs by the coast. The road gets rougher and rougher with every turn, eventually coming to a seemingly impassable point. A road repair crew is working here with some heavy machinery; the taxi driver talks to them and they signal for us to go on. The driver explains that last winter’s rains washed out a good part of the road, and it must be re-built before next winter. In my Spanish-accented Portuguese I ask, “How bad are the winters here?” He responds in English that though it doesn’t get cold enough to freeze, it’s very windy and rains a lot. The hillsides are lush with sub-tropical vegetation that seems imported from all parts of the globe.

I recognize the bright colors of Canna blossoms, favored by my mother in our garden in Cuba and later in DC summers, and the dried flower-spikes of blooming ginger. We pass groups of houses (villages?) built along steep streets rising up the hills, then a church with a small square.

Finally, rounding a bend, we turn on a narrow street and the driver stops at the first house. “Here you are.” I see a woman with a book sunning herself on the terrace, and ask if she is American. Yes, she responds, “You must be the artist we were told would be arriving today—are you by yourself? We were told it might be a couple, or two artists. No one seems to know much.” Eve and Michael are writers—poets from New England. They’ve been here for two weeks, and would be leaving day after next.

The Artist House in Lajes das Flores

Stairs to the attic outside.

Interior stairs.

Since I’m a painter, I take the attic. The more I travel, the lighter I try to go, but I’d been told to bring all my art supplies, as there was nothing to be found in Flores. My baggage consisted of one suitcase packed to the gills, a 22" x 26" portfolio for my watercolor supplies, and a hydration backpack with my camera.

The only way to get my bags upstairs was by the exterior concrete stairs, with no railing. Might as well get used to it. This side of the house looked to be still under construction, and indeed, the attic skylights had been put in just before I arrived.

View of Lajes (from the sunroom)
Watercolor, 11” x 15”

My attic bedroom is cozy and private, with a tiny water closet next to it so I don’t have to risk life and limb going downstairs to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. A not-quite finished area for painting opens out on to the terrace over the sunroom below— perfect for doing my taiji set. It takes me several days and bumps to train my body to crouch as I come up the interior stairs so I won’t hit my head on the ceiling when I leap onto the floor.

Jet-lagged, I sleep late the next morning and wake to a soft rain. My new poet friends are busy doing laundry and packing, but kindly agree to take me on a tour of the island later. They’ve been renting a car from Telma, a cousin of the Footpaths director, at less than the official going rate, and they tell me few of the roads are marked, though they do have a small map showing most of the roads. Later I will negotiate with Telma to take over the car (with the map) for the duration of my stay.

We take the road towards the west coast, the straightest stretch on the island, Michael explains. The fog is so thick nothing beyond the hydrangea bushes at the edge of the road is visible. I can smell the sea, but can’t see it, so it’s difficult to gauge how far away it is. As we reach the end of the road at the village of Fajã Grande, the fog begins to lift, revealing dramatic volcanic cliffs dropping off into the ocean, punctuated with ribbon waterfalls. They point to Monchique, a triangular rock about a half mile off-shore, explaining it’s considered the westernmost point of Europe.

Michael and Eve at Fajã Grande

Technically, Flores and its neighboring island of Corvo are on the American tectonic plate and are gradually moving away from the rest of the archipelago to the east as the Mid-Atlantic ridge widens. I joked with the Florentinos that in another million years, they’d be our close neighbors off the coast, since we are at about the same latitude.

The roads (and footpaths) of Flores are not for the faint-hearted, going up at impossible angles, twisting and turning along sheer drops with little more than Hydrangea bushes for visual guardrails. But the views are spectacular!

Being a tiny speck of land amidst such a vast ocean, the winds and weather in Flores change quickly, bringing about dramatic changes in light and atmosphere, much to the delight and despair of a plein air artist.

Fajazinha

The wind can be challenging at times, and in the heights, at the zone called Morro Alto (above 3,000 ft), the clouds would drop their moisture as they grazed the mountains. I hadn’t thought to bring my Polartec windbreaker, so I wore every layer of clothing I had to keep warm, and even then I frequently painted until I could no longer stand the cold (note to self: never travel without a warm jacket, no matter how ridiculous it may seem).

Spagnum moss and wind-sculpted junipers on Morro Alto

Morro Alto Vegetation
Watercolor, 11" x 15"

This watercolor was painted using the trunk of my little Fiat as table and shelter; I kept going inside periodically when it got too cold and wet to stand. The paper never dried completely over the three hours it took to do, so I had to retouch and finish it at the house. This is the look of the native vegetation in one of the few places where it has not been disturbed by introduced plants.

The Morro Alto vegetation is eerie, almost other-worldly. The Spagnum moss acts like a giant sponge when it rains and lets the other trees, ferns and grasses take its water up gradually, creating a unique ecosystem that acts as a filter.

Later that afternoon, at sea-level in Fajã Grande, the sun has come out and I feel warmer from sitting in the closed car. I see the sign for Poça do Bacalhau—the Cod’s Pool—and decide to park and walk out to paint it. The Poça appears to be a pool at the very bottom of the high waterfall I’d seen on my first day.

Fajã Grande Waterfall

The path runs alongside a stream, its banks strewn with yellow flowers. I open a rustic gate and walk among some cows grazing in a small pen enclosed by stone walls. The scene is lovely: the ruins of a stone house on the other bank, the towering black rock wall with the spray of the falls. Another gate—this one proves impossible to open and must be climbed over—and I am at a dark pool fed by a series of delicate cascades dripping from a ledge where the long ribbon of water becomes spray in the wind.

I sit on a rock to paint. As the breeze picks up, the spray from the falls wafts over me while the sun comes and goes. As the sun goes down it gets colder until I can’t stand it any longer—but my sketch is almost finished, so I tough it out. I back-track and reach the car, grateful for its shelter from the wind. Looking out to the sea, the irregular stone walls over the verdant fields make it seem very like what I imagine Ireland must be.

A few days later I explore the Fajã de Lopo Vaz on the southern tip of the island. A fajã is a strip of land created by rock falls, and this particular one has a warmer microclimate where pineapples and other tropical crops can be grown.

The day is quite warm and the wind has died down. Stripped down to my T-shirt, I start down the steep stone steps at the edge of the towering cliff. Pittosporum trees and junipers form a natural railing in parts, but in others I’m staring straight down to the ocean some 1,500 feet below—one misstep and it’s goodbye! I pass by a grotto with two small plastic statues of the Virgin of Fatima (Portugal’s patron saint) with floral offerings and I touch one of them, asking for her blessing and the grace to survive my foolish adventures unscathed.

Poça do Bacalhau
Watercolor 10" x 14"

I’ll need a blessing soon enough as I reach a place where the trail has washed out. It’s only a couple of steps across, but loaded down with a pack, I don’t dare make a jump for it —there’s nothing to stop me going over the edge. I take one step and the volcanic rubble slides under my foot before I put my weight on it. I sink down into a low crouch, hands holding onto the rocks on my right and slowly step across. The rubble shifts around a bit but eventually stabilizes enough to allow me to take the next step, then I’m over on solid ground again.

The path down to the Faja de Lopo Vaz

About two-thirds of the way down I see what I think is the best view for painting. I’m thinking: it’s going to be a tremendous workout to get back up the steep path, I might as well stop here. The afternoon is waning and the light will soon change. I sit down on my stool, setting up right there in the middle of the path. There is nowhere else, and after all, I haven’t seen a soul since I started down. About a half hour into my sketch, a couple equipped with walking poles goes past me. I recognize them as the young German couple I had talked to at the Poça do Bacalhau the day before. We greet each other. They were such city people they’d been intimidated by the cows—which they mistook for bulls because they had horns! I explained and told them to just shoo the cows out of the way to go on to the pool.

The path down and up.

I kept on working on my painting—it was coming along nicely, though some small beetles crawled over me. I apply sun screen and bug repellent. About forty-five minutes later, the Germans came back up, huffing and puffing. I’d pause to look over the tranquil, almost aquamarine ocean. It looked very inviting, but every so often, a boom from the waves hitting the rocks below reached me, and then I would realize you’d have to be crazy to try swimming here even on a calm day, with all those sharp rocks on the shore. There were a few boats out today, but after a week here I could understand why fishing was not the main activity on the island. Yet all the churches face out to sea: a tradition from the times when the Florentinos had no choice but to make their living from it.

I stayed until I was finished, then packed up and steeled myself for the return effort. At one point on the way back I encountered two cows coming down the path, herded by a stocky, middle-aged man. The cows would not pass me unless I gave them the better lay, so I had to hug the twisted junipers at the edge of the cliff to let them pass. I jokingly asked the herder if he brought his cows up and down this path every day, and he answered quite seriously no, only about twice a year, when they needed other pastures.

Cows being led on a paved road.

Fajã de Lopo Vaz
Watercolor, 10" x 14"

Next:

Part Two: Lagoas and Poças, On the Trail with Pier Luigi