Painting in Montserrat

Alice
Feb 7, 2016
2 min read

Montserrat is a region behind the city of Barcelona, a series of beautiful mountain peaks offering stunning views of Catalonia. The peaks include Sant Jeroni, Montgrós and Miranda de les Agulles.

Nestled in the heart of the mountain range, the Benedictine Monastery of Santa Maria de Monserrat is approximately 45km northwest of Barcelona.

Ascending the the height of 1,200m, myself and a friend travelled by train, and then cable car to view the vistas from the mountain and to paint a view of the mountain.

Upon arrival, we ducked into the information centre to acquire a map, appreciated quickly the monastery, before escaping up a path to the summit. We too the path to Sant Jeroni, which was a four hour round trip, and what felt like to steepest and immediately we were immersed in vegetation and rock gorges. As we climbed higher, the sun illuminated the landscape around us and we felt like we were ascending to another world of haze, cloud and mythology.

We walked for two hours, weaving through the mountain peaks, meeting climbers, campers and explorers on our way.

Finally, after meandering through a thick, cool undergrowth, we left the path to climb a large rock directly in the sun. As we turned to view our subject landscape, it was amazing. Pink light streamed across the gorge we had walked, blue indigo shadows made the everything into a Dali esq surreal painting. We lunched admiring and in awe of our setting, before getting to work and beginning painting.

We set ourselves an hour deadline for our sketch, and set with the backdrop of brilliantly blue sky, we began.

After half an hour however, i did tire and took a nap. However, Lloyd carried on to produce a fantastic excerpt of our journey.

The view from Monserrat was breath taking and our journey back afforded us th most beautiful sunset views.

I would recommend this walk to everyone and anyone, it was spell bounding and perfect way to really see and experience a place. The connection between hand and eye explores the interpretation of the seen landscape and the connection we now have with this view will stay with us for a long time.