What a pleasure to enter 2021 with two more exciting projects!

December 26 2020 - January 3 2021. I spent a week doing an artist residency thanks to The Nature Conservancy in Southern Nevada, discovering the Amargosa river basin. 

For two days it was too windy to stand outside with my easel, so I sketched from inside the bunkhouse.

I spent an afternoon with my 5year-old sketching our surroundings, while the 7year-old fished in the nearby artificial pond.

The other three days, we visited a number of very impressive conservation projects of The Nature Conservancy. I shall be producing artwork based on my observations and reflections then over the next few months.

January 13 2021 - March 2021. My 2x2meter "Allegory of Stages of Human Life', which I painted in 2006, is hanging in the main hall of the Basque elementary school Larzabaleko Ikastola, in the Basque Country, France. The children will be studying the various artworks that inspired me in creating this painting. I produced a video explaining my painting for the kids. This is part of a wonderful initiative by the Basque Artists' Collective Itzal Aktiboa to bring contemporary art and artists to schools, particularly urgent during COVID.

"Allegory of different stages of human life", 2006, 2x2m, oil on canvas.

The painting is transported from my family home in Izura on a special trailer..

Here it enters the ikastola, in Larzabale..

And now it hangs in the main hall of the ikastola.

On January 28th, I'm zoomed in from Reno, NV (it was midnight my time) to answer many wonderful questions from the kids. It was lots of fun, and great to chat with the kids in Basque.

Several local media have been covering the exhibit, including La Republique des Pyrenees, which produced a very touching account.

The ikastola teachers (anderoñoak in Basque) gave a very impressive report about how the kids engaged with my painting, also drawing inspiration and making acute observations from the various masterpieces I mentioned had been references for me. See here - and hear some beautiful local Basque spoken in the process!!