EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALJune 2, 1999
Calle Conde de Barajas, Seville
Powder Scenes
Soft pastel is pure pigment held together with a little clay. It’s
like everything around us. It’s like Seville itself. Powdery walls. When you touch,
you think the paint will come off on the tip of your finger like talc.
All this pure pigment and the facades appear on the paper like
miniatures of the sensitive Sevillano’s meticulously organic paint job. In the heat
of the afternoon the street is a cool strip of stripes in the fleshiest of tones.
An antique leans on his walking stick, digging a hole in the melting
pavement. His pants are minty. He’s in the shade of his, or someone else’s
doorway. Beside him, at La Bar Sardinia, a sandwich board makes shade for nobody. It reads
in English, "Fried Octopusy" – for the tourists – if they make it this
far. We’re beyond the easy corners, further from the centre, where residents wait
patiently for excitement.
The woman in her bathrobe is a perfect peach – round and tied in
the middle with a sash. Her legs are obscured by the balcony railing. She can wear a
groove in her floor from the railing to the kitchen. Her window overlooks the church and
the bar.
Yellow gingham girls with yellow ribbons trip on the cobblestone
between the candy store and the altar. Perfect shiny hair. Velvet faces. The powder –
softness from age or centuries of paint, or washing or youth – is everywhere, and in
pastel.
