Today, over 2 year later, I will finally tell the truth about the 5 walls I painted for the Biloba Bar in Granada, and that week of my life. Whenever I say I was flown down to the South of Spain, getting my flights and accommodation payed for, as well as getting paid for painting, people look wowed. “Wow, amazing!” they usually squark. Some looking a little-too-surprised of how of all artists I was invited to work on such a big project. And the truth was they should be surprised, I was surprised too. it was indeed a very big, important project. Only which I would realise later on, that was I very much way over my head.
It was not glamorous, it was not fun. It was probably the worst, and the best, but mostly the worst, experience of my life.
Why the worst? Easy, two reasons.
Numero uno. Because I arrived without realising how much work it was going to be (which ended up being a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot x 1500). Client expectations, and my stress, were very, very high.
Numero dos. On the second day I was in Granada, working and painting by myself of course, my boyfriend at the time decided it was a convenient moment to break up over the phone with me. It could not have been worst timing, especially as we had just (a day before), arrived back from a “romantic” holiday together in Italy. But I don’t want to sound bitter about something that happened over a year ago… okay I’m being truthful, yes I am still bitter.
So, on the 17th of February 2019 (yea, right after Valentines Day) I flew down to Granada and had a crazy week painting the bar / restaurant Biloba. I was working remotely in the mornings on my laptop and then painting from about 3pm to 1am. It was intense.
Cut to the chase, what happened?
To not be all neggy here is a quick summary why it was AMAZING > Wow! The sense of satisfaction when working on and finishing such a big project was like no other I have felt. I was incredibly proud of the work I was able to do, and the finishing results of the bar restaurant look really really good! Amazingly good! I actually pulled it off! The clients were organised and easy to work with. Even after I told them I had exceeded the set paint budget and worked many more hours than I had calculated originally. But they were still super cool in dishing out a bit more money for these extra costs. Everything to do with the clients was very, very positive.
And a quick summary why it was so BAD > Okay, imagine this. Imagine waking up at 7 am, in your little hostel bed, to the sound of other girls waking up, their alarm clocks going off and off throughout the early hours. So you get up, tired. Head to the hostel kitchen, the only place in the hostel the wifi works a bit.
You pour yourself an already made, very watery coffee. There in the hostel kitchen you work remotely on your lap top in the darkness, and, quite truthfully, dinginess, for the job which is actually paying you (kind of) until 2pm. People come in and out constantly, cooking, chatting, being normal, unlike you. You are not in Granada for a holiday.
At 2pm you have some instant noodles at the hostel because you’ve spent all your money on paint and you are waiting for your client to repay you so you can eat real food.
After your not-so-nutritious lunch, which of course you’ve washed down with a sugary and caffeinated drink, you go straight to the bar / restaurant which you have to paint to perfection.
You forget you’re out of pink paint so you run over to the paint shop. the clock is ticking, so you literally run. On the run over you ignore the beautiful monuments and attractions Granada has on offer, and the sun shining, the birds chirping, but you just scuttle quickly to the shop and then back to your dark, unfinished, painting dungeon.
Here you stay for hours and hours, taking cigarette breaks and when needing to pee, either go across the road to the cafe or piss in a cup and flush it down the tap. (This is because the bar is under construction and has no toilet yet). So a little piss on your shoes becomes common place. You’re becoming sub human and you don’t care anymore.
Perhaps you go for a kebab or a burger for dinner. Fast food to be taken straight back to the painting headquarters because its getting late and these 5 still-shabby walls are staring at you while the clock is ticking. More sugary caffeine to keep your brain and body going at a decent rate.
You paint until midnight-ish or until you physically and mentally can’t paint anymore.
Walls in progress
From there you go straight back to the hostel and around 2 am lie in bed crying for a few hours, it’s the first time all day you can think again about your own personal, romantic life, or better said, un-romantic life, and realise you’re boyfriend, sorry ex boyfriend, practically hates you. Anxiety racing, heart beating, somehow you fall asleep for a few hours, and then you wake up and repeat the previous day.
Oh, and also I forgot to mention, between smoking half a pack of cigarets a day you’re also popping Prednisona like they’re running out. What is Prednisona? They’re steroid tablets I use for my knees and eyes when they get inflamed. But they are actually super useful little pills which also help you focus and stay energetic. I learned the more you take the more you concentrate, however, I also learned the more you take, the more anxious, bloated and unable to sleep you get. Oopsies.
Let’s imagine that’s your life for a week.
I am really not meaning to sound ungrateful, I absolutely loved the opportunity to fly down to Granada to paint a restaurant, but what I am trying to say is… that is was not all fun and games, and definitely not glamorous.
On a serious note, how did it happen?
Thanks to Instagram I was found by an interior designer from Malaga, who had gone through art and Barcelona related hashtags and I popped up. I do love social media!
We were in communication for a long time (month and months, think over 6 months!) discussing ideas, colours, and planning the walls. Heidi, the interior designer, made the final decisions about the paintings’ themes and style,
What this meant was that I didn’t get much creative input in the final results. I do understand that she had to curate the space thoroughly, from the lighting to the furniture, so a solid plan that would work well as a whole was needed. But I would have loved to paint my own ideas. In the end the plan was to have one main wall with a face on it, and the other 4 walls with abstract shapes on them.
What was the process?
A lot of planning, especially regarding the colour palette. Luckily for me Heidi. the interior designer, had the difficult job of deciding the colours and final ideas. Which I must say did very professionally. She is definitely a perfectionist which raised the expectations even further, but a very pleasent woman to work with overall. Even though I was quite happy when she got into a car accident (nothing major! She was fine! Don’t looking at me like that, I am just messing!) and couldn’t make it to breath down my neck while. Thanks God, I owe you.
Painting
5 walls in 5 days, was A LOT more work than I thought it would be. Seriously, A LOT.
I arrived to Granda not knowing what I got myself into. I had never seen the bar before and in my mind I was imagining the walls to be smaller and whiter. In all honesty I don’t know what I was thinking before. Not much I guess because when I arrived the walls were bigger, greyish, and a lot more intimidating than I ever imagined.
Before (My painting dungeon)I arrived on a Monday, I flew from Barcelona – a day after arriving from Naples, Italy, yes for Valentines, yes with my boyfriend at the time, who became an ex in Granada… I think it was the first flight in the morning, arriving in Granada for about 8am. I met up with Heidi and the restaurant owners around 10 am and got straight into it, running to the paint shop and getting started. After that the week turns into a blur. I cannot remember the days, they seem to all mis into one long, endless day. You see I had until Saturday night (exactly 5 days) to pull off 5 walls. I had planned that I could get a wall done everyday… but I also needed to factor in drawing time, layers, cleaning time, and any other things that could produce delays. I realised very fast that I had not planned enough time, and that week, would not be for sleeping, or for sight seeing, or even for having a relaxed coffee in a plaza, no, that week was going to be hard, hard work. Looking back what I should have done, obviously, was to factor in some extra emergency time for these absolutely killer little setbacks.
The worst setback was when I was pretty much all done on Saturday morning and i was just finishing up the last details here and there, the last touches. On the girls face I just needed to finish up by painting her cutefreckles. So I paint the cute freckles and sit back and look at her, but they don’t look like cute freckles at all, they look like skin diseased moles, a hideous and painful face to look at. Moles, disease, not cute feckless, it’s nearly 12pm. Fuck, fuck fuck. Panic! I was supposed to be done! Reminder, I had to fly that night and had to be checking out of the hostel very soon. But she looked diseased. I stay another hour or so re-doing her face, going over the moles I did to create nice, smooth skin again. By then I am not so badly over time, but then it’s time to do the freckles again. I’m shaking. Exhausted, anxious, nervous. I start moving the paintbrush towards the wall and freeze just before the paint touches the surface. I can’t do it. I don’t do it.
I received a call a few days later from the client asking why the girl didn’t have cute freckles. I say I love the clear skin look and stop answering… I had a flight to catch and the time was up, sorry.
I think in times like those you just have to do your best and if it’s not perfect, well you tried. In the photo above you can even see the paint is wet on the nose, I literally painted to the last possible second, and over that too. Next time, I will absolutely give myself emergency time.
Another learning, as I was working mostly with a sponge to put the paint on to the walls and patting down the paint to not leave any marks or brushstrokes, my hands suffered quite a bit. A daily 9 hours of painting was making my poor knuckles bleed and then paint would get stuck in my skin, and when I would try get the paint out, chunks of skin would come with it. In the end I decided just to embrace the paint (and possibly its poison) and let them be.
The cleaning up process, using very strong chemicals to get paint drops off the floor, also took a toll on my poor hands, safe to say, they were fucked. I learned that next time I would bring my own painting equipment and some gloves. The photo below is from day 3 or 4 I believe, not a pretty sight.
My hand mid week. Due to hand painting the walls and using a sponge technique, as well as cleaning the drips and drops with strong chemicals.
As I was alone in Granada, and just working the whole time, I didn’t get the chance to make any, honestly zero friends, but on the other hand the builders were great company. Shot out to the Granda builder crew! We laughed and chatted together, they recommended places I should visit which I still have as pending!
The Results
I am over the moon with the results, it does make all the hard work worth it. (kind of)
What about Granada itself?
Unfortunately, I did not get to see as much of Granda as I would have loved too. I did not see inside the Alhambra or eat famous Granda tapas, or even have a casual romance with a Granada boy. I guess I must rerun, and soon!
Granada is a beautiful city, quite cold when I went in February, but really really nice, and pretty cheap compared to Barcelona. I want to go back to enjoy the city. And of course flop around with pride at the restaurant I painted, bled and peed in. There is also a big university there and there is a lot of art, life, bars, restaurants, shops and also nature around (which I did not see but was told about, so it sounds fun!).
Mostly what I saw o Granada was the 5 minute walk from the hostel to Biloba bar, and to the bar to the paint shop, and back, or from the hostel to the paint shop and then to the bar, I had a few routes covered. Not until Saturday (a few hours before my flight after I had to check out the hostel) I could actually go investigate Granada a bit.
A student of mine recommended the view point below, called Mirador de San Nicolas, which was actually incredible as you can see the Alhambra and all of Granda. The only problem was me though. I was exhausted by Saturday afternoon, from sleepless nights and 15 hour workaholic days, I had been anxy smoking a half pack of cigarets a day. And I felt it on the vertical and strenuous-ish climb up to it. Well… the woman carrying her pram and her baby wasn’t even sweating… But as I say I was the problem, the place is beaut, go if you can.
Conclusion
How to sum up my Granda experience? Hard, tiring, limit-testing, stressful. No, I didn’t see the world famous Alhambra, or stay in a nice hotel, or even really finish the paintings. But would I do it again? Yea, why not.
My friend Basak visiting Biloba Bar / Restaurant in Granada. November 2019
P.S. It was a truly unforgettable experience, I am very thankful for the opportunity, I am so happy to have worked on the Biloba project in Granada.