Necropolis

Walking in Soria, Spain, we stumbled upon rock basins in the shape of Egyptian mummies, pre-Christian Iberian graves. Later we visited Gormaz, an austere Moorish fortress on top of a mesa, with its key-hole windows and caliphate arches. At the furthest point of our trip south, San Baudelio, a tiny Mozarabique church, joining East and West, Christianity and Islam. 

For this group of small 3 ½” square drawings I used what I could find outside: nettles, wild spinach, iris and calendula blooms, rubbing them into the paper. Graphite brought gravity to the color, a kind of earth or mineral weight to the forms which suggest the arches, windows, doors and keyholes as well as the rock basins at the Necropolis in Soria.