Mural painting 8m x 3m in Tarragona.
Photo Credit: Javier Gargallo
I can't believe I've never talked about this PROJECT (yes, with caps) that Veronica Algaba and I did about 5 years ago! I think I finished so exhausted and drained by it that I didn't even want to talk about it. Now I only remember the beautiful results and how much Veronica and I grew from it, but let me say it was one of the hardest things I've even had to work on. It took me about a year to get back to painting. It is now, 5 years later that I look back at this masterpiece we did together and how much it streched us and made us grow as artists. I don't think I will ever do something like this, but I look back proud of what we accomplished, the hard work we put into it, specially having to work in a dirty and humid basement for an entire month.
We finished right on time for me to fly to the US to start a new year adventure as an Aupair. And I want to thank my dear Laura Garcia Cachinero for making my suitcase for a year, I would still be there if it wasn't for her.
It was an intense month, the wall seemed bigger every day, no matter how many hours we would spend in that basement, the work left seemed to never end. We cried, we laughed, we singed, and there were times where we wanted to quit. And I want to thank our parents for their support, for their homemade meals, their snacks and drinks, for their car rides and their multiple trips to the paint store.
We did this mural for a building complex. The arquitect wanted to make something different on a wall in the garage entrance, so that space that is usually forgotten and dark, would be full of color and a place where . Instead of doing a continuous landscape, we decided to divide the wall in squares of different sizes and create a collage of different beach elements, people and textures. All the images were taken by us which made it extra special.
PhotoCollage made by Veronica & Elisenda.
This was the collage we started off with. We wanted to create a piece that would represent the beach and we both love photography so we started collecting pictures we'd taken in the past and we went to the beach to take some more to complete our idea and have a variety of people and objects. And we decided to be part of the story too incorporating pictures of us on the painting.
Some of the squares were 100% made by Veronica and some of them were a collaboration between the two of us.
What we thought it would be a two week project, turned out to be a month long piece. Painting a 8m x 3m wall is no joke. Every single square was a very detailed painting. We slowly started to see progress and coming together. We used beach elements, people, water and sand textures, patterns... to fill every space of the wall.
The same time we were working on the painting, the building was being finished so we were sorrounded by people, noise, dirt... We would always have people stopping by and curious about what we were doing.
We recorded some of the process and I put it together in a fast-forward video! This video is very low quality and you'll think we have severe parkinson, but it shows the progress of this complex piece!
